LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UzL. 



UNITE!) STATES OF AMERICA. 



Old Testament Studies: 



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©15 <&*$tamcttt ®h*ology. 



R. V. FOSTER, D. D., 

AUTHOR <>K INTRODUCTION TO Till. STUDY OF THEOLOGY, AND 

Professor in the Cumberland University Theological 
School, Lebanon, Tenn. 




: : Jf lemino t>. IRerell : : 



CHICAGO: 

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



PREFACE. 



Tnz Bible is a many-sided book, and it should be 
read and studied from many points of view. The truths 
which were conveyed through the centuries to God's 
ancient people, and which through them were intended 
to be conveyed to us, must be thoroughly and rightly 
grasped before they can be safely applied. This book is 
the brief development of a plan of Old Testament study 
which I have pursued for several years, and with great 
profit to myself. If any Bible student who has not 
already done so, should develop for himself this or some 
similar topical plan, neither could he fail to find it very 
beneficial, especially if it should be done in that spirit 
which should always characterize our study of the 
Word of God. 

The Old and New Testaments are to us revelations 
from God; but when we study them, as we should, 
among other ways, as the record of a long series of rev- 
elations which God made to his ancient people, the Old 
Testament, both logically and chronologically, comes 
first. It would not be in the least degree wise for the 
church, either in the Sunday School or elsewhere, to 
depreciate the value of the Old Testament. One of the 
strongest pillars of the New Testament Church is fur- 
nished in the evidential value of that relation which 
the Old bears to the New. 



PREFACE. 



The course of thought in these pages has not brought 
me into direct oontact with the literary problems of the 
Old Testament, which might necessarily make the larger 
part of some plans of study. The theories concerning 
the origin and composition of the various books I have 
not discussed, but when necessary have assumed such 
ground in regard to these matters as seemed to me best. 

The Old Testament itself has of course been my chief 
source; and yet I have read all the foreign and American 
books and magazine articles on the subjects that were 
available to me. To them I have sought to give due 
credit at the proper places, in so far as I may have 
quoted them; and I cannot say that any one author has 
been more helpful than all the others. 

The best wish that I can express in publishing this 
Outline is that the course of Old Testament study may 
prove to be as eDgaging and as profitable to the readers 
for whom it is chiefly intended as it has been to me, and 
that after a while we may find the similar study of the 
New Testament equally so. 



R. V. F. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

1 . Biblical Theology 11 

2. Revelation 27 

3. Relation of the Old and New Testaments to each other. . 35 

OLD TESTAMENT STUDY. 
Its Scope 47 

Division I.— TnE Pre-Mosaic Period. 

ClIArTKK I. 

Historical; or, The Principal Facts of this Period 51 

gl. The Creation 52 

$2. The Primal Abode and Fall of Man 59 

£3. The Noachic Deluge C3 

.^4. The Dispersion of the Nations 69 

§5. Abraham Before his Call 79 

Chapter II. 

THE PRE-MOSAIC THEOLOGY AND RELIGION. 

$1. Theology and Worship of the Antedeluvians 81 

The Patriarchal Theology and Religion 88 

I. Outside of the Sphere of Revelation 88 

II. Within the Sphere of Revelation 91 

Division II.— The Mosaic Period. 
Definition of Mosaism 104 

Chapter I. 

HISTORICAL AND DOCTRINAL BASIS OP MOSAISM. 

HI Historical Basis 104 

§2. Historical Basis Continued -Moses 108 

Doctrinal Basis 113 



8 CONTENTS. 



Chapter II. 

THE MOSAIC DOCTRINE OP GOD. 

§1. The Name "Jehovah" 123 

§2. God as the Only One 128 

§3. God as Invisible and Spiritual 133 

§4. God as the Holy One 135 

§5. Attributes implied in Holiness 138 

§6. God as Creator and Sovereign 141 

§7. God's Revelation of Himself to Man 146 

Chapter III. 

THE MOSAIC DOCTRINE OP MAN. 

Definition 153 

A. Man as Originally Created: 

§1. His Origin 154 

§2. Man in his Sexual Aspects 156 

§3. In his Racial Aspects 159 

§4. "In the Image of God" 

§5. The Names Adam and Ish 166 

§6. Body, Soul, Spirit , 170 

B. Man as Affected by Sin: 

§1. The Probation and Fall 175 

§2. Sin 183 

§3. Death 187 

§4. After Death 189 

Chapter IV. 

THE MOSAIC DOCTRINE OP THE KINGDOM OP GOD. 

A. The Kingdom in its Central Idea: 

§1. Definition 195 

§2. Initial Promises 198 

1. The Protevangelium, Gen. iii, 15. 

2. The Blessing of Shem, Gen. ix. 

3. The Blessing of Abraham, Gen. xii, 1-3, etc. 

4. The Blessing on the Twelve Patriarchs, Gen. xlix. 

§3. The Redemptive Calling of Israel 207 

§4. The Obligations and Penalties Implied 211 

B. The Kingdom of God as Organized Israel- 

§1. The Theocratic Character of the Government 214 

82. The Mosaic Constitutional Law 218 



('(LXTKXTS. 



The Mosaic Civil Law 

1. Concerning Parent and Child. 
'2. Concerning Marriages. 

3. Concerning Master and Slave. 

4. Concerning Foreigners. 

5. Land and other Property. 

6. Debts, Loans, Interest. 

7. Tax Laws. 

£4 The Criminal Code 888 

g6. The Ecclesiastical and Ceremonial Code 288 

1. The Tabernacle. 

2. The Priests and Levites. 

3. Concerning Offerings. 

4. Laws intended to implant the idea of holiness. 
C. The Typical and Prophetical Aspects of the Kingdom. 

gl. The Mosaic "Types" 241 

$3. The Star of Balaam 860 

£3. The Prophet Promised 255 

Division III. 

PERIOD OK THE PROPHETS. 

Definition 

Chapter I. 

I'ROPHETISM HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 

£1. Civil and Religious Characteristics of this Period 261 

g& The Rise of the Prophetical Order 988 

S3. Periods of Biblical Prophecy 272 

Chapter II. 

NATURES AND CHARACTERISTICS OP PROPni 

gl. The Prophetic Gift 875 

£2. Hebrew Prophets and Heathen Mantism . 878 

$3. Prophecy and the Natural Shemitic Genius 888 

£4. The Predictive Element in Prophecy 

j§5. Characteristics of Prophecy 

§8. Forms of Prophecy 296 



10 CONTENTS. 



Chapter III. 

DOCTRINAL CONTENTS OP DAVIDIC PROPHECY. 

A. 

THE PREDICTIVE, OR OBJECTIVE, ELEMENT. 

The Central Thought 299 

§1. The Covenant with David 301 

§2. The Messiah in the Typical and Typico-Prophetic 

Psalms 305 

B. 

THE MEDITATIVE, OR SUBJECTIVE, ELEMENT. 

Characteristics: 

§1. The Davidic Theology (Doctrine of God) 313 

§2. The Davidic Doctrine Concerning the Moral and 

Ceremonial Law 318 

§3. Retribution 322 

§4. The Future Life 324 

§5. The Inequalities of Human Life 328 

Chapter IV. 

THE DOCTRINAL CONTENTS OP POST-DA VIDIC PROPHECY. 

General Remark , . . . .342 

§1. The Idea of God in the Prophets 344 

§2. Man's Relation to God 348 

§3. The Messiah in the Prophets '. 352 

§4. The Future 356 

§5. Individual Resurrection 361 

§6. Old Testament Doctrine of Angels 363 

Index 367 



INTRODUCTION. 



I.— BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 

1. General Remark. 

There is a vast amount of popular ignorance in regard 
to the Bible, and yet it is also t rue that no book is more 
universally read or studied than it is. 

There are many right ways of studying the Bible, 
and no way is the best to the exclusion of all other 
method-. The Bible is a many-sided book, and he 
who restricts his gaze to one side can never see it all. 
It tells us a great many things, and he who reads it 
simply in general can not know much about it. The 
jurist, for example, does not read the constitution of 
the State merely in a general way; he reads it much 
and carefully, in order that lie may ascertain its bear- 
ings on the particular statute or other matter which 
he may have in hand from time to time. 

Nor do we like to read or study a book without 
knowing its title. We like to know in advance what 
it is about, and so natural and proper is this de-ire 
that we could scarcely be induced, ordinarily, to buy a 
book whose title-page is gone. The title of the Bible 
is not "The Bible," for that expression mean- simply 
"the book.'' If the Bible had a title-page, what would 
it bel for the Bible is evidently one book, and it evi- 



12 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



dently has one paramount object in view. I should 
think if the reader would ascertain what this para- 
mount object is he would then have discovered what to 
many is the lost title-page of the Bible. Some books 
have two titles, a short one and a longer one. Now, 
it would seem that the title of the Bible might be cor- 
rectly stated thus: " The History of Human Redemp- 
tion; or, The History of God's Purpose to Redeem 
Man, and of His Dealings with the Race to that End." 
And I think that if we were to study every part of the 
Bible with this fundamental idea of redemption in our 
minds it would seem to us to be a more interesting and 
intelligible book than it could otherwise be. Nor is it 
a difficult matter to so express the titles or central 
thoughts of the several books of the Bible as to readily 
see the natural relation in which they stand to the title 
of the whole. Thus, in its relation to this redemptive 
idea which gives as the title for the whole Bible, the 
title of the book of Genesis may be regarded as ' ' The 
Seed of the Woman Bruising the Serpent's Head," 
for it is a great mistake to suppose that the serpent's 
head did not begin to be bruised until Christ came in 
the flesh. The bruising began at once, and was kept 
up through the centuries, and will be kept up until he 
and his seed are overthrown. The object, then, of the 
inspired writer of Genesis in recording the account of 
the creation and the fall was that he might make an 
intelligible and orderly approach to his subject, which 
appears in hi: 15. The chapters and books which follow 
on to the end are the history of the development and 
fulfillment of this promise, moving in line with the 
development of the human race, and chiefly the Israel- 
itish branch of it. 



INTRODUCTION. 18 



From this point of view it is easily seen also that the 
title of the book of Exodus is "The Messianic, or 
Redemptive, Calling of Israel" to thai special work of 
receiving and taking care of that truth whereby God 

would redeem man. In like manner the title of Levit- 
icus is "The Outward Means, Conditions, Agencies, 
and Occasions of Reconciliation with Him." And in 
general, if we wish, from this point of view, to know 
what the title of any book in the Bible is, we have only 
to ascertain in what relation it stands to the above- 
mentioned title of the whole, and in no case will this 
be difficult to do. 

It is not my purpose, however, to discuss here the 
various methods of Bible study, some of which are 
excellent, while others are more or less faulty; some 
superficial and easy , others more difficult, but also more 
fruitful of good results. It i^ my purpose to discuss 
briefly one of the methods or sciences — for it may also 
be called a science — known as biblical theology, a name 
which ought not to be offensive even to the common 
reader, for what is biblical theology but, to state it in 
general terms, the orderly presentation of the teachings 
of the Bible concerning God and his purpose and plan 
of redemption \ 

.'. Definition and Scope. 

The term ''biblical" is in this connection used in a 
kind of technical sense, whereby it is not meant to be 
implied, of course, that the ordinarily so-called syste- 
matic theology is not in another sense quite biblical. 
Systematic theology, however, is constructed in refer- 
ence to the state of Christian thought and affairs at the 
time of the writer, and i- bound to take more or less 
formal heed to the voice of the Church a- expressed in 



14 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

creeds and rulings of ecclesiastical councils. But bib- 
lical theology as such has nothing to do with creeds as 
such, nor with the present, only in so far as its forni 
may to a greater or less extent be determined thereby. 
It seeks the truth of revelation, not so much in its 
adaptation to the wants and phases of the Church at 
the present time, as in its adaptation to the ancient 
people of God, to whom it was revealed in the first 
place. 

A systematic theology or Christian dogmatics there 
must be, of course, but it is only a systematic exposi- 
tion of the creed and the voice of the Church, founded, 
in the view of the writer, on the sacred Scriptures. 
But, whatever may be the prepossessions of the writer 
of a biblical theology, this branch of theological science 
itself is supposed to deal only with the Bible, unham- 
pered by allegiance to any other confession It builds 
on the postulate of a central thought in the whole Old 
and New Testament revelation, viz. : the divine purpose 
of redemption, and it seeks to trace within the period 
of the biblical history the movement of that purpose 
toward its consummation. God spake unto the fathers 
"by divers portions and in divers manners" (Heb. i:l), 
and the object of biblical theology is to systematically 
exhibit and discuss this revelation of God as it was 
actually made from time to time. 

But God revealed his will and purpose not only by 
means of the words which he spake through prophets 
and apostles, but also by means of the facts or historical 
occurrences recorded in the Bible. Biblical theology, 
then, is the historical exhibition of the religion in its 
entirety, including doctrines, worship, and events, as 
set forth in the canonical books of the sacred Scrip- 



XN1R0DUCT10& 18 



tine-. It conducts it- discussion apart from an j con 

ional standpoint, though the results of it- inquii 
may, of course, be quite in harmony with the creed in 
w as the latter may express itself . It abides mainly 
in tlir Bible times, seeking to kn<>w the course, and the 
contents, and the significance of God's revelation to his 
ancient people primarily in its relation to that people 
themselves. This must be first known before it- rela 
tion to the subsequent Church can befullj apprehended 
and appreciated. Onlj thus can the fundamental im- 
portance of the OW Testament in its relation to the 
\ v, and hence to ourselves, be made clearlj visible. 

Biblical theology, then, would seem to be easily 
distinguishable from what is commonly called Syste 
matic theology or Christian dogmatics. The latter has 
a by do means unimportant place in theological science 
and literature, but it can uot, and it should not, lose 
sight wholly of the Confession and of the aspects and 

demands of tl rganized Church and the times. Bib 

lical theology is systematic, but it is not "Systematic;" 
and, on the other hand, Systematic theology ought to 
!><• in harmony with the teachings of the Bible, l>nt it 
is not ■* Biblical " in the proper technical sense in which 
the word is used. 
.7 ' '>>></. 

That is, upon what principle or plan ia biblical the 
ology constructed 1 It- method i- historical. It 34 
to reproduce or exhibit the process whereby religious 
knowledge attained it- growth, as found in the Bible, 
using the books of the Bible for this purj cording 

to their presumed chronological order. It shows how 
religious knowledge was added from time to time to 
what was already in the possession of G pi ople ox 



16 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



had been previously revealed. It shows the laws of the 
development of the biblical religion from the germinal 
principles in the beginning to the completion of the 
revalation in the Christ of the New Testament. But 
the growth or development which biblical theology 
traces is a supernatural growth. It is not possible to 
explain it on merely natural grounds, and hence it can 
by no means be regarded as the mere outcome of the 
striving of the so-called religious genius of the Hebrew 
people. 

But biblical theology is also inductive in its method, 
because it is based on biblical facts, and ever seeks the 
unity which exists in the abundant diversity of biblical 
times, authors, types of doctrine, etc., and, by com- 
paring one with another, reaches its conclusions. It 
examines the statements or passages severally and 
together, treating the biblical revelation as embodied 
in divine deeds and institutions, as well as in words or 
verbal statements of doctrine and precept. In short, 
it embraces all the essential factors of the history of 
the kingdom of God as set forth in the Old and New 
Testaments. 

4-. Sources. 

The primary sources of biblical theology are, of 
course, the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testaments. Protestantism rejects both the Jewish 
and Christian apocryphal writings, while the Roman 
Catholic Chnrch retains the former, attaching to them 
a secondary authority. Other sources of information, 
such as contemporaneous secular nistory and the relig- 
ious records of peoples lying outside of the sphere of 
revelation, are to be consulted by way of collateral 
illustration. The biblical religion is one among a great 



lNTlluin CTWN. 17 



variety of religions, all of which possess a greater or 
Less Dumber of features in common, as, for example, 
the recognition of the existence of a Divine Being to 

whom man is in some way responsible. Bui a true 
biblical theology recognizes the religion of the Bible as 
a Bupernaturally revealed religion, and as being the 

only one that is SO revealed. And it is its province 
not only to ascertain, systematize, and discuss the con 
tents of this religion, out also to distinguish what is 
peculiar to it from what it has in common with other 



religions. 



I > 1 1 1 while the Old Testament is the chief source of 
the data and subject matter of Old Testament theology, 
it is necessary for us to have a right view of the Old 
Testament itself. It is not to be regarded merely as 
the record left to us of the religious views and practices 
of the ancient Hebrews, in the same sense as the Zen- 
davesta may be regarded as the record of the religion 
of the ancient Persians. The ancient Hebrews did and 
believed many things which the Old Testament did not 
allow, and it required from the very outset more than 
one belief and practice which they were extremely slow 

to accept which was, indeed, directly opposed to the 
persistent national tendency. This is an obvious fact, 
and it helps to prove that the Old Testament religion 
was by no means the mere outcome, as some rational- 
ists have affirmed, of the Bimplegift and fondness of 
the Shemitic people for religious matters. 

It is the province, therefore, of a true biblical theol 
ogy to distinguish not only between the religion of the 
Old Testament and that of heathen nation-, but also 
between the natural religion of the masses of the 
Hebrew people and that which was furnished to them, 



18 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



and through them to us, from above and in a super- 
natural manner. # 

So, also, the revelation of the New Testament is to' 
be distinguished from the contemporary uninspired 
Jewish theology in the midst of which the New Testa- 
ment form of religion was developed. But a thorough 
understanding, in so far as this maybe possible, of that 
which lies immediately on the outside of the sphere of 
revelation will enable us only the more clearly to per- 
ceive and appreciate the peculiar excellency of that 
which is within. Such works, therefore, as throw light 
on these outside but immediately adjacent matters are 
to be regarded as useful collateral sources of informa- 
tion, as, for example, Rawlinson's " The Religions of 
the Ancient World," Lenormant's "Occult Sciences of 
Asia," Krekl's "Religion of the Pre Islam Arabs," 
Mover's "The Phenicians," Renoufs " History of the 
Egyptian Religion," Weber's "System of the Old 
Synagogue Palestinian Theology," Shuerer's "Jewish 
People in the Time of Christ, such parts of the Tal- 
muds and Targums as have been made accessible, the 
"Sacred Books of the East," edited by Professor Max 
Mueller; in short, the whole of contemporary history, 
whether within or immediately without the sphere of 
revelation. 

5. History. 

Biblical theology, as do all other branches of study, 
has a history; and neither as a science nor as a method 
of biblical study can its present state and its present 
claims be known unless its history is also known. As 
an independent branch of the theological discipline bib- 
lical theology is a modern science, and its growth, like 
that of the physical sciences, has been gradual, and like 



IA raODUOTlON id 



them it has not yet reached perfection. No works were 
written on this Bubject, strictly bo called, by the early 
Christian fathers, nor does the Bible seem to have b 
studied by them according to any method which biblical 
theology employs. The early fathers resorted largely 
to the inspired writings both for their opinions and for 

the proofs of them. By the later fathers, however, the 
writ in-- of the earlier fathers and philosophers began 
to he much quoted, a tendency which becomes 
apparent in the sixth century, until finally Christian 
theology became almosl exclusively speculative and 
mystical, tin rulings of popes and councils becoming 
in all cases the rule of faith, and the Bible virtually a 
dead letter. It being universally taken for granted 

that t\\r voice Of the Church Was in all things the Voice 

of God, or, in other word-, in harmony with the Bible, 
of course there could he no such thing as biblical the- 
ology in the strict Bense, much less in the scientific 
sense which recognizes it as a distincl organism. The 
theologians for the most part spent their time either in 
dreaming mystic dreams or in seeking rational expla- 
nations and proofs of certain doctrines which in the 
very nature of the case admitted of no rational expla- 
nation, hilt were purely and solely matter.- of revela- 
tion. 

But the revival of learning, particularly the study of 
Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, which began in Germany 

about the mid. lie of the fifteenth century. BOOH pre- 
pared the way for the close exegetical study of the 
Scriptures without which the great Reformation of the 
sixteenth century would have been impossible. Bog 
Bacon, indeed, long before this revival of learning 
(1291), was well acquainted with the Hebrew and 



20 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Greek, and exercised a lasting influence in favor of the 
study of the original lauguages of the Bible. But he 
was not distinctly a Scriptural interpreter, and still 
less a writer of theology from the strictly biblical 
point of view. 

To Nicholas Lyra, however, who died in 1340, be- 
longs the honor of being the first Scriptural exegete 
who employed in his studies the original languages. 
He wrote a commentary on the whole Bible, in which 
he sought, first of all, the literal sense — a fact the more 
worthy of mention because, first, it was by no means 
the custom in those days for those who wrote on the 
Scriptures to seek after the literal sense; second, be- 
cause it was plainly impossible to have a biblical the- 
ology without first having a biblical exegesis based 
upon a thorough study of the literal sense, for biblical 
theology is to a great extent simply an orderly arrange- 
ment and discussion of the results of biblical exegesis; 
and third, because Luther, who may be called the 
father of the Reformation — theological exegesis, made 
such use of the hints which Lyra's work offered 
him that the Roman Catholic pun, "If Lyra had 
not lyred, Luther had not danced," has become 
an oft-quoted saying. In a certain important sense it 
is true that if there had been no Lyra there could have 
been no Luther. The close exegetical study of our 
English Scriptures may be regarded by some as dry 
and impractical, and the similar study of the original 
Scriptures may be regarded by some as even more so, 
but it has been a very blessed thing for the Church 
and the world that Luther and many others did not 
think so. 

But while Luther contributed much to the super- 



INTRODUCTION. 91 



structure, rather to John E&uchlin and Erasmus be- 
longs the honor of laying the exegetical foundation of 
biblical theology. They were the - v\ es of ( rermany," 
the former contributing more to facilitate the Btudy of 
the Old Testament in the Hebrew than any man of his 
day, while the latter was not less influential in the 
department of New Testament Greek Btudy, thus con- 
tributing largely, and perhaps unwittingly, to the 
release of the scholarship and religion of the day from 
the shackles of scholasticism and the spirit of specula- 
tion. The birth, not only of a more biblical theoL 
but of biblical theology as a distinct branch of theo- 
logical science, could be only a matter of time. Bui it 
could develop nowhere but on the soil of Protestantism, 
nnd it could scarcely have failed to develop there. 

Bul the new found freedom and facility of Bible 
Btudy, secured by the Reformation, was abused; it 
being hardly less diflicult in the Church than in the 
State to preserve the true mean between license and 
tyranny. This very abuse, however, became the third 
Me]) in the growth of biblical theology. The'Bible was 
studied more diligently during the sixteenth and sev- 
enteenth centuries than it had been for a thousand 
years; but in the estimation of many it came during 
these two centuries to be Btudied as a mere store-house 
of proof-texts, ministering mainly to the polemic- of 
ecclesiastical creed-. 

The Bible was the book in which each his dogma Bought, 
The Bible was the book in which each his dogma found 

The unity of the Scriptures was to a great extent lost 
sight of. The Bible was Btudied, not a- a whole, but 
hereand there in those places where it was supposed 
to teach the preconceived opinion. The Bible 1- the 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



only rule of faith, the only authority above conscience. 
As rules of doctrine held in due subordination to the 
Bible, creeds are of great value and use; and the theo- 
logians who gave to the world the great creeds of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rendered a service 
which no one can despise. But men were no longer 
as loyal to the voice of the Church as they had been, 
and hence the polemical dogmatism of the times nat- 
urally resulted in a two-fold reaction, Pietism on the 
one hand, Rationalism on the other. The influence of 
the one, at first especially, was wholesome; that of the 
other, never so, except indirectly. The originators of 
Pietism were John Coccejus, a Dutch theologian who 
died in 1669, and Philip James Spener, who established 
what he called a school of Biblical Theology in Halle 
in 1694. The former was professor at Ley den, and 
did much to free the Reformed Church from the tyr- 
anny of scholasticism, and taught her to give heed to 
her true character and work as emphatically a Bible 
church. His system of the covenants, as set forth in 
one of his principal books (1648) was the first attempt 
at constructing a system of biblical theology. Nor was 
it a mere accidental and unintelligent attempt. He pur- 
posely arranged his system under the biblical catego- 
ries, or heads, and purposely built it on an orderly 
study of the Bible as a whole. In all these respects he 
occupied substantially the same ground as the Pietists. 
He was, however, a firm supporter of the mechanical 
theory of inspiration, and represented the whole Old 
Testament as a mirror in which we may have an accu 
rate view of the events which were to happen under 
the New Testament dispensation to the end of the 
world — a theory which would not now be regarded as 
satisfactory even by the most conservative thinkers. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Spener wa> also penetrated with a conviction that 
the theological method of that age did not meet the 
demands or wants of the Church, and that it was not 
suited to form good preachers and teachers of religion. 

ile therefore recommended banishing the various sub- 
tle inquiries, and the polemical mode of treating theo- 
logical questions, and urged in place of these a purely 
biblical and practical statement of the doctrine- of faith. 
lie was a devoted Lutheran, and duly appreciated the 
value of the creed, hut he labored Btrenuously, and 
not without effect, to vindicate the importance and 
authority of the Bible as our rule of faith over the 
Creed and the outcome of a mere philosophical course 
of reasoning. lie recognized, as every student of the 
Bible musl do, that that which is logical is not always 
that which is biblical or theological. 

A. II. Prancke was the contemporary and fellow- 
laborer of Spener. He urged the yoUDg men of his 
day to acquire a thorough mastery of the fundamental 
helps in Bible study, particularly the languages, and 
he illustrated the value of such knowledge in his own 
evangelical and biblical work, for he was himself a 
master. But he also insisted that the knowledge of 
such helps was only a means to a higher end. which is 
the right understanding of the subject-matter of God's 
word, and that to this end we should Industriously 
Bupplicate God for the enlightenment of the Holy 
Spirit. Could Pietism have remained thus, it would 
have been well for biblical theology: and I know of 
the biographies of no German evangelical worker- and 
scholars winch might be read with more edification by 
the student of today, than the biographies of Spener 
and Francke. But their method of dealing with the 



24 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Bible degenerated in the hands of their followers, be- 
coming to too great an extent allegorical and mystical, 
confounding the true explication and use of the Scrip- 
tures with mere application and suggestion. It should 
be borne in mind that we cannot know what the Scrip- 
tures as a whole, or any given passage, means for us, 
unless we know in advance what it meant or was in- 
tended to mean for those for whom it was written in 
the first place. 

The other reaction was Rationalism; and so radical 
and permanent has its influence been upon biblical 
theology that it can not pass unmentioned even in 
brief sketch of the history of Bible study. As the tyr- 
anny of Roman Catholicism has produced its sons of 
evil, so Rationalism is the wayward offspring of the 
freedom of Protestantism. It originated largely with 
J. S. Sender, who died an old man at Halle in 1791. 
He says of himself: " I certainly would not make our 
poor little reason the mistress of our faith" — that is to 
say, there are certain revealed facts which I surely 
would not reject merely because my reason can not 
understand or explain them. But he sowed baleful 
seeds which grew only too rapidly and luxuriantly. 
Van Oosterzee calls him the leader of the German 
Neological school, and a representative rationalist. He 
had many followers in his own land, and the winds 
have blown the seeds over the seas. 

But rationalism was met on the other hand by a vig- 
orous supernaturalism in the writings of such men as 
Storr, the Flatts, Steudel, Knapp, Hengstenberg, Ne- 
ander, Tholuck, Schleiermacher, Harms, and others of 
more recent date. It is not necessary to give the list 
of books here which have been written by representa- 



1NTR01H GTlOh d5 



tives of the two schools respectively, and which lie 
more or less nearly in the line of works in biblical the 
ology. The number of sytematic treatises by English 

and American scholars is very limited, though not a 
few excellent monographs have been produced, and the 
Iie1 is rather rapidly increasing. 

While the rationalistic school, since the days of Sem- 
ler, has contributed much to biblical study, and to the 
development of biblical theology, it has caused the 
supernaturalistic to contribute perhaps even more. Ra- 
tionalism in the hands of some of its representatives re- 
jects miracles and prophecy and the whole divine element 
of the Scriptures, and of course its biblical theology is 
influenced, and its method formed, accordingly. Super- 
naturalism affirms the presence of the divine element, 
and emphasizes it, and maintains that that which is not 
explainable by human reason is not, therefore, to be 
regarded as contrary to human reason. The human 
mind could not reason its way to all that was needful 
to be known, and hence a Bible, written or unwritten, 
and supernatural in some of its aspects) was necessary. 
The Bible does not speculate. It says what it has to 
Bay in a concrete and practical manner, stating its facts 
and its doctrine- as matters to be believed rather than 
to be justified in every instance by our processes of 
reasoning. Young and immature students Bhould read 
works of the rationalistic school with greal caution. 
No intensity of rationalism can ever kill the truth, but 
it may kill the young man. 

G. I)<nt<j< r*. 

Biblical theology i- the offspring of Protestantism, 
and in no other than the free and fertile soil of Prot- 
estantism can it ever flourish. The history of its origin 



26 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES, 

and rise to a distinct place as a recognized branch of 
theological science is not the least interesting chapter 
m the internal history of the modern Church, But 
while Protestant freedom and activity have given to 
the world this and many other phases of biblical and 
theological study, would it not be well for Protestants 
themselves to hold ever vividly in mind the fact that 
liberty is not license ? The Church, by which we mean 
the Protestant branch of it, still has a rightful voice, as 
indeed it must ever have. He who works within the 
pale of the Church, and under its auspices, necessarily 
in so doing surrenders a part of his freedom to the 
Church. If Protestantism should ever degenerate 
into an excessive individualism, then may be justified 
the often repeated accusation of our Roman Catholic 
friends that Protestantism is nothing but "a rushing 
into a bottomless pit " of negations, discords, and con- 
fusions. Nothing is so harmless as the pure truth, 
nothing is so valuable, nothing more desirable; and 
many truths are at the bottom of a deep well, their 
luster so dimmed that they can not be easily identified. 
But there is nothing hid save that it should be mani- 
fested; neither was any thing made secret but that it 
should come to light. And yet it is also true that it 
would be a sad day for the Church, and hence for the 
world, if Protestantism, in its bounding freedom and 
eagerness to unveil the truth, should swing loose from 
all its historical landmarks, and the word " traditional " 
should become only a term of reproach, and we should 
no more have respect for the gray hairs of the once mghty 
Past. In madias res tutissimus ibis. The middle way is 
the safest; and if Protestant biblical study, whether in its 
narrower or more comprehensive sense, would achieve 



INTRODUCTION. 



its best results for the Church and the world, in this 
wav it must walk. Nothing should be labeled "Truth" 

until it is known to be truth: and nothing that has 
long, and apparently on good grounds been received 
as true should be labeled as false until it is known to 
be so. He who walks m the presence of mystery 
Bhould walk cautiously, and he who stands in the vicin- 
ity of the Cross should do so with bowed and uncov- 
ered head. These are no places for other than rever- 
ent and circumspect utterances. 

Of the various branches of Christian theology, bibli- 
cal theology in one or more of it- chapters and aspects 
is attracting, perhaps, the most attention at the pres- 
ent time; and its investigation, if pursued in the spirit 
of honest inquiry and reverential recognition of the 
Holy Scriptures as the word of God, is destined to 
produce the bebt results. Theologically our age, hap- 
pily, is ironical, Bible searching in catholicity of spirit 
being its prominent characteristic. God grant that it 
may ever be so; and yet may he also grant that men 
may ever reverently regard the Bible as the book 
which not only contains his word, but which in a cer- 
tain true and important sense is his word. 



n.— REVELATION. 

By this is meant God's making himself known to 
man. In its general sense the term ha- no reference 

to the written word of God. There were many revela- 
tions before there was a Book, though the Book also 

is to us a revelation. God lias made to man two 
classes of revelations: the one in nature and the other 



28 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the record of which we have in the Bible. In what 
respects do the two differ ? What characteristics has 
the latter which the former has not ? The questions 
are of fundamental importance. If we deny that there 
is any essential difference between the two, biblical 
theology is reduced to the level of natural theology, 
and is, moreover, thoroughly rationalistic. There is 
no longer any appeal to faith, but only to reason and 
fear. In so far as the two revelations cover the same 
ground, they are in harmony with each other. On 
one, or both, rests all the knowledge which man has 
of God, his inferences being based on what is revealed. 
Without at least a natural revelation, there could be 
no religion whatever. All heathen religions, even, 
without exception, proceed on the supposition of a rev- 
elation of some sort. All revelations, whether "natu- 
ral" or biblical, are in some sense supernatural. It is 
God who makes the revelation, and God is above 
nature. And all revelations are in some sense " natu- 
ral;" they are all made to man and in harmony with 
the natural laws of his being. The faculty in man to 
which appeal is made in both cases is his faith, or re- 
ligious consciousness; if this faculty be vitiated, the 
revelation is only^so far the less a revelation to him, 
whatever it may be in itself. "If the light in him be 
darkness, how great is that darkness. " The difference 
between the two revelations is best seen by a parallel 
description and exhibit of their characteristics. 

First. The natural revelation. This may be con- 
sidered under several aspects: 

(1) The original revelation of Himself which God 
has made to all men in the very constitution of the 
spirit breathed into him in his creation. In the absence 



INTRODUCTION. 



of any higher revelation, man's own moral nature sup- 
plies to Borne extent Its place. This moral faculty, 
which is itself a revelation, is horn with every man, 
everywhere, and in every age, however much or little 
it may afterwards he developed by another revelation. 
It is to him a 4 * conscience " which both enables him t<» 
know good and evil, and condemns the one and ap- 
proves the other. (Rom. ii.: 11. 15.) The heart of 
every man. whether with or without the Bible, is a 
judgment hall, where witnesses are heard for and 
against him, and where the Bentence of the judge is 
pronounced. The retributive element, based upon this 
natural revelation of obligation to a Supreme Being, 
and the consequent distinction between right and 
wrong, is present in all religions. The heathen poet 
Sophocles, speaks oj the unwritten and indelible law, 
or revelation, of the gods in the hearts of men. and 
contrasts this internal and divine legislation, which is 
eternal, with the ever-changing laws of man; and Plu- 
tarch, of a law which i- not outwardly written in hooks, 
but implanted in the heart of man. Neoptolemus re- 
fused to save Greece at the expense of a lie. Antigone 
did not hesitate to violate the temporary law of the 

city in order that she might fulfill the eternal law of 
fraternal love, and Socrates rejected the opportunity 
of saving his life by escaping from prison, in order that 
he might preserve to the last his loyalty to the magis- 
trates. It was his idea of duty. This original revela- 
tion which God has made in the heart of man i- the 
beginning of all other revelations, and LS fundamental 
to all others, for without it no other would he possible. 
(2) In the physical creation. Here also God has 
revealed himself to all men. "The heavens declare 



30 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his han- 
diwork," and they do it "to the end of the world," 
(Psa. xix). " The invisible things of Him since the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived 
through the things that are made, even his everlasting 
power and divinity." (Rom. i: 20). But, of course, 
"the more God is otherwise known, the more this 
whole infinite, visible creation declares His invisible 
glory, and reveals His hidden nature and will." 

(3) In history. More and more is God revealing him- 
self in the natural events of human history. The his- 
tory of the world was once the recognized history of 
redemption, and is becoming so again. "To the ordi- 
nary reader of the world's history, the whole appears 
like a chaos of incidents, no thread, no system, no line 
of connection running through it. One course of 
events is seen here, and another there. Kingdoms 
rise on the stage one after another, and become great 
and powerful, and then pass away and are forgotten. 
And the history of the Church seems scarcely less a 
chaos than that of the world. Changes are continually 
going on within it and around it, and these apparently 
without much order." But it is not a chaos. The 
hand of God has always "wide worked through the 
universal frame," and worked to a definite end. To 
him, especially, who has some preparation for divine 
instruction, is this Hand visible. To him all human 
history is a divine, yet natural, revelation of truths of 
eternal significance and perpetual freshness and force. 
History's lessons are God's lessons. But after all, the 
natural revelation of God in the human heart with its 
mysterious whisperings and strivings; in the physical 
creation, with all its wondrous glories; and in human 



INTRODUCTION. 31 



history with its mighty pulsations, was not enough. 
The Less there is known of God otherwise, the darker 
and more voiceless la the Datura] revelation. It exhib- 
its God to man chiefly in the relation of Sovereign 

Creator to those whom He ha> created. An<J here He 
might have paused forever in the ] rocess of revealing 
himself; for, ''from the standpoint of creation, no 
other interposition or manifestation of Deity could 
have been demanded" than that of One who created, 
and governs, and preserves. Man having abused his 
liberty, and lost the power of attaining the end which 
he was designed to reach, "God in the exercise of 
free grace entered into another relationship with 
man, different from that of merely the Creator 

towards the creature. In virtue of this eternal council 

of grace, he appeared from the commencement as the 
Guardian and Guide of man, and as such Be conde- 
scend «1 and adapted himself to the wants of man's 
childhood. He. a- it were, grows with him, and BO 
draws him to Himself. When, by an abuse of his 
liberty, man had fallen into sin and misery, He opened 
up before him the salvation provided in that Coun- 
cil, and continued it by a progressive communication 
of Himself, and condescending to man, until its ful- 
0688 was attained by 1 he incarnation of ( rod." j Kurtz. ] 
And this -pecial. Divine, progressive manifestation of 
Himself to man, in its historical, doctrinal and ethical 
aspects is 

Second. The .Biblical revelation. Here God is 
presented not merely as the Creator, Governor, and 
Preserver, but especially as One who would redeem 
man, and who for this purpose is revealing Himself to 
him. The unique character of the Biblical revelation 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



may here be briefly considered under a four-fold point 
of view: The agent, the form, the method, and the 
subject-matter. 

(1) The Agent. The revealing agent, or one who 
reveals, in all divine revelations, is God. But in the 
Biblical revelation the revealing agent is God as the 
Holy Spirit, or God as the Logos or Eternal Word. 
The holy men of old spake to their contemporaries as 
they were moved by the Holy Spirit; and their words 
were committed to writing under the same Spirit's 
superintendence. The whole Bible is inspired in a 
sense in which no other book is; and the revelation of 
which it is the record, as well as the revelation which 
it is itself, differs in this respect from all other reve- 
lations. 

(2) The Form. While, as has been said above, even 
all "natural" revelations of God are in some sense 
supernatural, the Biblical revelation is supernatural in 
a peculiar sense. It implies not only inspiration, but 
the personal manifestation of God, and miracle. The 
human faculty, however, to which all these supernatu- 
ral elements must necessarily appeal, is that faculty 
by means of which man apprehends and believes 
religious and spiritual truths. Further than this 
there can be no demonstration, or absolute proof. 
Man may always deny, if he chooses or desires to 
do so, even though Lazarus should return with messages 
from the dead. In this domain, knowledge and faith 
are identical. But faith in the Biblical revelation is 
not merely faith in its supernaturalness. It involves 
many facts and truths which are known to be such on 
other grounds. Man does not need a revelation, super- 
natural in the sense in which we are here using the 



INTRODUCTION. 33 



term, in order that he may know that BID is hateful to 
I, and that without faith in Him it LB impossible to 

please God. These things are already known, and the 

fact that the Biblical revelation here, and on so many 
other points, testifies in harmony with the natural, i> 
only additional evidence that the Biblical revelation 
may be true m regard to matter- beyond the range of 
the natural. 

(3) The Method. As has already been stated, its 
method is that of an historical process. First, the 
period of two thousand years from Adam to Abraham, 
during which the knowledge of God, bo far as the Biblical 
record informs us, was mainly the remnant of that which 
was originally revealed to Adam, or Mich a- might he 
derived through the light of nature and history, with 
here and there a brighter gleam through a higher reve- 
lation; second^ the period from Abraham to Moses, 
four hundred year-, in which the higher verbal revela- 
tion was for more frequent; and so on through other 
periods to the close of the Biblical revelation. " Pre- 
eminently indispensible it i-," says Dr. Ladd, "that 
there shall be a processbf revelation," . . and . . "there 
is no proof for the truth of ( )ld Testament religion supe- 
rior to tin-, that this religion is the only one of the re- 
ligions of antiquity which exhibits the conception of an 
historical and genetic process of revelation." Whether 
it be the strongest proof or not, it is a remarkable one. 

(4) The SubjectvMatter, or Content-. Here the 
unique character of the Biblical revelation i- apparent 
to the most unskilled observer. The best results of 
natural revelation, as embodied in the Sacred Books of 
the East, fall far below it. The Vedas of the Indian-, 

the Y Kings of the Chinese, the Zendavesta of the 



34 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



Persians, the^Eddas of the ancient Germans, and the 
Koran of the Mohammedans — these are faithful repre- 
sentations of heathen religions, all of which are essen- 
tially mythical. So much of doctrine as these books 
contain is only a sort of scholastic system, while the 
Biblical revelation is historical and also deeply prac- 
tical. The Hebrews lived in immediate and constant 
contact with powerful polytheisms, and were them- 
selves in tendency persistently polytheistic; and yet 
the Old Testament religion is uncompromisingly mon- 
otheistic, and it is the only one that is. The Penta- 
teuch was written, and the revelations embodied in its 
four last books especially, were made when the Hebrews 
were scarcely freed from Egypt; and yet, says Rawlin- 
son, no contrast can be greater than that between the 
Pentateuch and the Egyptian sacred book called the 
Ritual of the Dead, ' ' unless it be that between the Pen- 
tateuch and the Zendavesta, or between the same 
work and the Vedas. A superficial resemblance may 
perhaps be traced between portions of the Pentateuch 
and the creation-myths of ancient Babylon; but the 
tone and spirit of the two are so markedly different, 
that neither can be regarded as the original of the 
other. When they approach most nearly, ?s in the 
accounts given of the Deluge, while the facts recorded 
are the same, or nearly the same, the religious stand- 
point is utterly unlike." But, aside from its ethics 
and special doctrines, which will be considered more 
at length in the course of this work, the crowning dis- 
tinction of the Biblical revelation is the apocalypse of 
a personal Redeemer. This, indeed, is the beginning, 
the middle and the end of the whole process of revela- 
tion. It is not only true that in no other revelation, 



INTRODUCTION. g .-, 



orreligion, is th, Christ found, but it is true that in 
no other is even a Chrisl found. The purpose of re- 
demption as wrought out according to an historical pro- 
cess, and as embodied in a persona] Redeemer of the 
race and of the individual, is not merely one factor of 
the Biblical revelation, but it is the central factor 
which permeates all others, and imparts to them their 
highest significance. 

The story of Genesis can be read aright only when 
regarded as an essential part of the later story of the 
God-Man. Natural revelation as lying at the basis of 
all heathen religions, may have a beginning, but it has 
no end from which to derive significance. It is like a 
bookhalf completed, endingin the middle of a sen- 
tence. T\w question, Oh, that I knew when and how 
I might find Him, remain, in all heathen religions for- 
ever unanswered. "Our hearts," as Augustine said, 
"are formed for Christ, and they are restless until they 
find rest in Him." The Bible reveals Him; and in this 
the Bible is the Book without a peer 



EH.— THE RELATION OF THE OLD AND NEW 
TESTAMENTS TO EACH OTHER. 

The Old and New Testaments are two volumes to 
the same hook, hut they are not simply that. They 
are, indeed, much more than that, covering, as they 
do, not wholly different ground, but rather different 
aspects of the same -round. In other words, they 
treat different aspects of one and the same subject, 
viz.: God's purpose and plan of redemption. 

First. They stand to each other in the first place in 



36 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the relation of contrast. The Old Testament is largely 
an historical book, embracing many nations within the 
scope of its vision, and giving a running chronicle of 
the world and its peoples over a period of more than 
three thousand years. It is concerned, however, 
chiefly with the training of a single nation into the 
character of God's people, and the training is effected 
largely by types, and symbols, and complex ritual. 
To such an extent, indeed, is this true, that Paul, in 
contrasting some of the phases of the Old with corres- 
ponding phases of the New, speaks of the former as 
darkness and the latter as light; the one as bondage, 
the other as liberty; the one as shadow, the other as 
substance; the one as letter, the other as spirit; the 
one as elements, or rudiments of the world, the other 
as an heavenly kingdom; the one, dealing chiefly in 
external and carnal institutions, was intended to be 
only temporary; the other, dealing chiefly in the spir- 
itual aspects of salvation, rather than with forms and ob- 
servances, was intended to be perpetual. The second, or 
New Testament dispensation of the church on earth, 
is also the last one. Considering them as mere econo- 
mies, the Old, of course, is far inferior to the New, 
and at the same time more elaborate and imposing. 
But he who considers either as a mere system of rules 
and regulations fails to perceive its highest significance 
to us. Whatever the Old Testament economy may 
have been to the Old Testament Israel, it is something 
more than an economy to us. The Old Testament dis- 
pensation and the Old Testament itself are for us two 
different things. It is the province, in part, of the 
Old Testament to furnish us with a description of the 
Church as an organization as it obtained in Old Testa- 



HODUCTIOIT. 



incut times; but there i- vastly more Id it than the 
description of an obsolete economy. There is much in 
it that the contemporary [sraelite did nol regard as an 
t — « iit ial pait <>t' that economy at all, and which, indi 
Was not, and it would have had no less value to the 
contemporary [sraelite had it never been recorded. 
There is much general history, and special history, 
and inspired meditation, and prophecy, which, strictly 
speaking, are no part of tin 1 Mosaic economy, but 
which are none the Less valuable. The Old Testament 
abounds in law, and emphasizes observance; but n is 
far more than law, and he who in contrasting the Old 
with the New hooks Looks upon the former a- mere 
law and the Latter a- mere antithetical Gospel, does 
injustice to both. 

St'C"/i</. In the SeCOnd place, the two Te-taniel)t- 

hear to each other the relation of identity: not of 
absolute identity, of course, but as essentia] parts of 
the same process; an identity like thai which the roots 
of the tree have with that part which i- above ground, 
both being pervaded by the same sap. The Bible, 
though made up of many book-, i- yet one book. The 
two Testaments may in some sense be called the two 
volume-. Bach would be Incomplete without the 
other, and each i- essential to a right and thorough un- 
derstanding of the other. The Old looks forward to 
the New; the New looks backward to the Old. Each 
is an inspired record of historical facts, doctrine- and 
precepts. Bach not only contains the Word of Gh d, 

but each is the Word of God The Church in each is 

the same, and bo are the doctrines, however veiled they 
may be in the one, however unveiled in the other. 
The same crimson thread run- through both, and each 



B8 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

is animated by the same breath. The central thought 
of the one is also the central thought of the other) viz. : 
God's purpose to redeem man, and the plan whereby 
he would do it. Many details are involved in the rev- 
elation and execution of this purpose; for the purpose 
presupposes a plan. Redemption implies a great deal; 
the death of the incarnate Son of God, and much more. 
It implies on the part of man a knowledge of God, 
and also of himself, his condition, his needs, his responsi- 
bility to God, his possibilities. It has reference to the race 
as well as to the individual; it means transference from 
darkness to light; it means transformation; it means 
an uplifting from degradation, a displacement of hea- 
thenism and the substitution in its stead of all that is 
now meant by Christianity. God could have revealed 
his purpose to save man in one short sentence, as he 
actually did to Adam (Gen. hi: 15), and faith in that 
briefly revealed purpose was sufficient for Adam's re- 
demption, as it is for any man's. But the purpose 
implied a plan, the execution of which implied its rev- 
elation. The purposed redemption contemplated more 
than the rescue of Adam. Myriads of human beings 
were to come from his loins, all of whom would also 
need to be redeemed. So far, indeed, as the Old Tes- 
tament people are concerned, the process of revealing 
the plan to them is also the process of executing it. 
Adam's redemption was completed in himself, but that 
of his race was not. As in Adam's case, so also in the 
case of subsequent patriarchs to whom God revealed 
his purpose: all that was needful on their part was 
faith in the simply, briefly expressed purpose. They 
had no knowledge of the details and they could have 
no faith in the details. Even in the case of the so- 



IX TR0DUCT10A Bfi 



called typical sacrifices, which were offered from the 
beeinninff, the faith was not in the sacrifice, nor in the 
act of sacrificing, but it was in the divine purpose to 
redeem, in some unknown way. which lay behind the 
sacrifice, and of which the sacrifice was a memorial. 
Salvation has always been more than a mere Individual 
affair; it is also an affair of the race. The divine pur- 
pose to save could not he supernat urally revealed to 
every man, one by one, through the generations, as it 
was to Adam, Abraham, Moses, and other selected 

individuals. At any rate, if this he deemed a possible 

way, it was not regarded by God as the besl way; it 
was not his plan. lie teaches a few here and there 
through the old centuries, and these few. under his 
direction, teach tin 1 revealed purpose to many, and 
these to many more. The sacrifices, circumcision, ► 
and. indeed, everything which contributed to the 
make up of what we may call the Old Testament 
Church, instead of being regarded as types in the 
usual Bense of the term, should rather be regarded as 
memorials of God's simple purpose to redeem; ju-t as 
the Lord's Supper and all that contributes to the 
make-up of the New Testament Church may be re- 
garded a- a memorial of the same fact. 

The additions made, from time to time, to the sim- 
ple purpose to redeem, as originally revealed, are de- 
termined by circumstances as they arise, and by the 

detail- of the plan known only to God Bui through 
the whole -eric- of revelations, from Adam to the 

close of the New Testament period, "one increasing 
purpose run-." The Old Testament may be regarded 
as in some Bense the record of these revelations; or, in 
other words, of how God was gradually unfolding and 



40 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



executing his purpose. The Xew Testament, on the 
other hand, is the record of later revelations and events 
looking to the same end. viz. : the redemption of man. 
In the Old Testament times, those to whom Grod made 
known his purpose and will were his Church, and it 
was used by him as the instrument or means of its own 
enlargement; so it was also in the Xew Testament 
times, the Church in the latter case, in so far as its 
external organism and doctrines are concerned, being 
only a new phase of the Church in the former. They 
were essentially the same church, and essentially the 
same doctrines. Xoah. or Abraham, or David, was 
saved in precisely the same way as Paul or Polycarp — 
that is, by faith in God's revealed purpose. Neither 
the saints of the Old Testament nor of the Xew under- 
stood the mystery of God manifest in the flesh, how- 
ever much more those of the latter may have known 
about it than those of the former. This simple re- 
vealed purpose and faith in it, with all that faith im- 
plies, however vaguely it may be understood, are all 
that are absolutely necessary to the salvation of any 
man in the narrower sense of that term. And this 
simple purpose is definitely revealed in both Testa- 
ments. But salvation, in the broader sense of the 
term, means something more than immunity from sin 
and punishment, whether in this world or in the next. 
It means the reconstruction of the race and of the 
earth, the removal of sin and its consequences, the 
restoration in Christ, and through him, of all that 
man the individual and man the race had forfeited 
in Adam. More was needed, therefore, as the race 
multiplied, than the revelation of the mere purpose to 
redeem. Individual education, and social education, a 



ROD I • 



;| "' tx>OT8e of tuition, patient and continued through 
:l '""- series "' centuries, are n< and hence the 

< Md Testament is as it is, instead of a sent 
( ""- ''i: L5. It is conceivable thai the whole Bible is 
not essential to the being <>\ the Church, for there was 
a time when the church did not have it; but how( 
this may be, ii is certainly essentia] to the weU-be'ing 
the ( Ihurcb . 

But while, as we have said, the Bible is a record 
revelation, it is also to us more than that; it is a i 
latum itself. We now know the purpose and will of 
(l I just as truly and more completely than an\ one 
deration of the church in Bible times. We have the 
f the accumulated tuition and experience 
of the church in all the periods of revelation. Had no 
written revelation been furnished the church, it would 
have been ! ry, in order to it- continued well 

( " instantly repeat, in it- actual life, the con- 

tents of the revelation as we now have it The Bibl 
then, is not merely an historical record of certain events 
which took | and of Divine words which were 

spoken from time to time through the ancient centu- 
ne s; but it i- ord made under Divine superintend- 

ence, and for the express benefit of the Church in .-ill 
and it is as truly a revelation to us as if it- con 
tents had been divinely made known to us 
they were to the ancient ( fourch. 

elation of ti 
inv >n of the Choi 

Qtity of t 
don under the two die 

earli. | 



42 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Old Testament to the extreme disparagement of the New, while 
the Manichseans wholly rejected the Old. The Alexandrian 
school, by an allegorizing exegesis, asserted too close an identity 
between the New and the Old. The motto of Augustine was in 
the main the belief of the ancient church: The New Testament 
lies hid in the Old; the Old Testament lies open in the New. 
The Reformers taught that the church began in Paradise and 
continues through all time. But by Luther and others the unity 
between the Testaments was conceived of rather as a doctrinal 
identity, or harmony, than as the unity produced by a gradually 
advancing process of development. Calvin, on the other hand, 
emphasizes it in both aspects. He discusses at length the "Sim- 
ilarity " and difference of the two Testaments in his Institutes, 
Book II., chapters x. and xi. "I readily admit," says he, " the 
differences which are mentioned in the Scripture, but I maintain 
that they derogate nothing from the unity already established 
[in the preceding chapter.] . ,. . I assert and engage to prqve 
that all these are such as pertain rather to the mode of adminis- 
tration than to the substance. In this view, they will not prevent 
the promises of the Old and New Testaments from remaining 
the same, and the promises of both Testaments from having in 
Christ the same foundation." ..." Therefore the Lord kept 
them under this tuition [of the young heir referred to in Gal. 
iv ], that he might give them the spiritnal promises, not open 
and unconcealed, but veiled under terrestrial figures." ... "It 
is a proof, therefore, of the constancy of God, that He has deliv- 
ered the same doctrine in all ages, and perseveres in requiring 
the same worship of His name, which He commanded from the 
beginning. By changing the external form and mode He has 
discovered no mutability in Himself, but has so far accommo- 
dated Himself to the capacity of men, which is various and 
mutable." 

'" Here [in the Old Testament] shalt thou find the swaddling 
clothes and the manger in which Christ lies. Poor and of little 
value are the swaddling clothes, but dear is Christ, the treasure 
that lies in them."— Luther in his preface to the Old Testament. 
"Moses is the fountain of all wisdom and understanding, out of 
which welled all that was known and told by all the prophets. The 
New Testament also flows from it, and is grounded therein. If 
thou will interpret well and surely, take Christ for thee; for he 
is the man to whom alone all refers." — Ibid. " Christ came in 
the spirit of the Old Testament fathers before he appeared in 



US rLWDUCTIOJS. 48 



the tlesh. . . . And they were saved by Sim, just as we are. 
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and forever." — Ibid (on Gal. 
iv. 2). 

There is one perpetual church of God from the promulgation 
of the promise after the fall of Adam, and the doctrines of it 
were always the 8*me, though the manner of embodying and 
propagating them varied. — (Melancthon.) "The Bible can never 
be rightly studied unless the two Testaments are comprehended 
in their unity and harmony. If the Old Testament is in the New 
in fulfillment, the New is in the Old in promise. There is force 
in the thought of Archbishop Trench, that in a just and reasonable 
sense, all the-Old Testament is prophetic— that the subtle threads 
of prophecy are woven through every part of the texture, not 
separable from thence without rending and destroying the 
whole;" and the prophecy which the Old Testament, even in its 
entirety, was always uttering, directly or indirectly, in one form 
or another, was prophecy of the Christ who should come, and of 
the redemption wrought through Him. 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDY. 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDY. 



ITS SCOPE. 



That form of biblical study called Old Testament 
theology deals, as we have seen, with the entire con- 
tents of the Old Testament — that is, with its historical 
as well as it^ other parts. The people, however, to 
whom God made special revelations of Himself, and 
to whom from time to time He unfolded in a special 
manner His purpose of redemption, and who were 
themselves a party to this process of unfolding, lived 
in the midst of peoples who were wholly outside of the 
Bphere of revelation. These latter had a religion made 
up of beliefs and practices peculiar to themselves for 
the most part, hut which, nevertheless, at times greatly 
influenced the chosen people, and were now and then, 
to a greater or less extent, adopted by them. 

The background of the Old Testament revelation i- 
a dark heathenism, and its surroundings also, in the 
midst of which it glows like a diamond. Numerous 
allusions arc made in the Old Testament to the con- 
temporary heathen beliefs and practices; indeed a large 
part of the Old Testament is devoted to a history of 

the Btruggle against heathenism. While, therefore. 

Old Testament theology deals with the whole contents 
of the Old Test uncut, it discriminal js closely between 

that which is within, the sphere of revelation and that 



48 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



which is without; although this latter falls under the 
constant purview of the inspired historians and proph- 
ets, and hence in this sense makes up a large part of 
the Bible. In other words, it discriminates between 
what Noah, Abraham, Moses and the rest believed and 
did as the recipients of Divine revelations, and what 
they believed and did as ordinary men. Any other 
view either lowers Old Testament theology to the level 
of a treatise on heathenism and mere natural religion, 
or elevates the latter to the level of the former. The 
author of the book of Exodus, for example, says that 
u the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." Passing by, 
for the moment, as it does not just now concern us, 
the fact that the author of Exodus was supernaturally 
inspired to say this, the question that would here arise 
is: Does this saying of the writer represent the current 
belief, whether of the Hebrews or the Egyptians, con- 
cerning the sovereignty of the Supreme Being over 
human hearts and lives, or does it represent simply the 
view of the author ? If the former, the saying fur- 
nishes an insight into the theological status of the times 
in regard to this matter of the absolute sovereignty of 
the Divine Being. But if it was not a matter of cur- 
rent belief, it was of no special value to the contempo- 
raries of the author, only in so far as they had confi- 
dence in his superior knowledge or inspiration; and if 
they accepted it as a true statement, in any sense, it 
would be regarded by them as an addition to their 
small knowledge of the Divine Being. The object of 
Old Testament theology, whether as a branch of bibli- 
cal science or as a method of Bible study, is not merely 
to present the teachings of the Old Testament in syste- 
matic form, but also to ascertain the various factors of 



V0NTRNT8. 49 



the Old Testament religion in the order in which they 
were made, whether in a natural or su|>ernatural way. 
Nor does Old Testament theology have anything to 
do with the question of the authorship and composition 
°* t,,r Biblical books; the discussion of the several 
documents and codes of which some suppose the Pen- 
tateuch to be composed; the d ttes of Job, Daniel, Deu- 
teronomy, or other books; the integrity of the book of 
Isaiah or Zechariah- these lie beyond its province. 
Old Testament theology accepts the generally conceded 
conclusions of historical and textual criticism in so far 
as the conclusions concern it, but it does not ar<nie them. 
The subject-matter of the books in their accepted chrono- 
logical order, is that with which it has to do. 

In the progress of our study of the Old Testament, 
we shall also have occasion to distinguish between 
the word and purpose of God as revealed in history 
and prophecy, and the same as set forth in such in- 
spired meditations as the books of Job, Ecclesiastes, 
and many of the Psalms. In the form. a- we may trace 
what may he called the objective unfolding, or devel- 
opment of the Old Testament religion, because the 
knowledge of God, in this instance, comes from with- 
out into man. In the latter, the knowledge oi God is 
awakened directly in man's mind or heart apart from 
the immediate agency of teaching or historical object 
lesson. Hence, this may be called the subjective 
development of the Old Testament religion. 

The whole may be considered under the three-fold 
and natural division of : (1) The Old Testament relig- 
ion in the pro-Mosaic times; (2) In the Mosaic times; 
(3) In the times of the Prophets; where first appears the 
distinction, " objective " and "subjective' 1 revelation. 



50 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Oehler includes our First and Second Divisions in 
one, and calls it Mosaism. But there were, as we 
have seen, various elements of a supernatural revela 
tion, and of a religion, natural and supernatural, 
existing from the very beginning, and in the com- 
munication of which Moses had no part, of course. 
It seems better therefore to distinguish by name as 
well as in fact the pre-Mosaic elements from the incre- 
ments which were added through Moses. Oehler also 
gives a separate Division to the subjective elements of 
the Old Testament religion, commonly called the Old 
Testament Wisdom; but as these increments, consist- 
ing in inspired meditations, were made synchronously 
with the Prophetic Period, I include this as a sub- 
division in our Third Division. 



DIVISION 1. 
Tin; Pbe-Mo8aic Period. 



Chapter J. 

HISTORICAL: ok. THE PRINCIPAL FACTO OF THIS PERIOD. 

God revealed himself to the world in various ways 
and at various times; as in the creation: his dealings 
with Adam: the deluge; his dealings with the patri- 
archs, etc. The Old Testament is not primarily this 
revelation. l»ut i^ rather the inspired history, or record, 
of it. Old Testamenl theology deals with' the histori- 
cal facts recorded, because the very nature of the Old 
Testament requires thai it should first appear as deeds, 
OTa 8 life, in ••in historical form: then, and not until 
then, can it appeal- as doctrine. Had not tins been the 
natural and necessary order of revelation, that which 
W(v call the Bil e, ncluding both Testaments, might 
just as well have been a compend of theological doc- 
trines, instead of being also, and in large pari, a record 
of historical facts. In as much, then, a- the recorded 
revelation embraces both history and doctrines an- 
nounced orally, rwvy period will l»,- divided into an 
historical and doctrinal section. The historical section, 
however, will not he an enumeration of every event 
recorded, hut only of such a- , m thcmselv< 

degree of significance, or furnish us an insight into the 

(51) 



52 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



Old Testament divinely given religion. If the Genesis 
statement of the fact of creation, for example, were sim- 
ply one among many, and on a level in all respects with 
them, it would possess no more pertinency to Old Tes- 
tament theology than any one of the others. But in 
the Genesis account God is on the one hand and the 
fact of creation is on the other, and the two are so 
linked as cause and effect as to furnish us an important 
and peculiar glimpse of the Divine Being and the rela- 
tion in which he stands to the animate and inanimate 
worlds. And the glimpse of God we have here is in 
harmony with every subsequent one. Hence, it is in- 
cumbent upon Old Testament theology to study all 
facts which embody revelations or interpret revelations. 
But in its historical department, it seeks chiefly to re- 
count how God revealed himself to the world, making 
known, not only himself, but also his will and his 
plan of redemption. In its doctrinal department, it 
seeks tohat he revealed concerning himself, his will, 
and his plan. "Revelation is pre-eminently truth 
which has been done in history;" a Ui Thus did the 
Lord,' as well as a c Thus saith the Lord.' " 

§ 1. The Creation. 

There was a religion — certain things believed and 
certain things done — long before there was a written 
revelation. The human race had existed on the earth 
at least twenty-five centuries before anything was writ- 
ten. What we here term the pre-Mosaic religion, is 
the religion which obtained during this period, that is, 
from the creation of Adam to the time of Moses. The 
source of our information is chiefly the book of Gen- 
esis, the researches into the ancient Assyrian, Egyptian 



TUB PRE M08AI0 PERIOD 






aDd other " , *" Biblical religions, furnisl certain 

legitimate inferences and glimpses. On the supposi- 
tion that thai Genesis is wholly the production of 
Moses, the inquiry here to be made is: In writingthe 
acc °mi1 of the creation, to what extent was he writing 
something entirely new to his contemporaries? [f he 
was writing something wholly new to then, to what 
extent was it unknown to Jacob, Abraham, Noah or 
the antedeluvians* It is obvious, therefore, that in 
seeking todetermine the elements of the Pre-Mosaic 
religion, we must discriminate between the elements 
of faith and practice which were made known for the 
first time through Moses, and those which were known 
before and were truly put on record by him. 

In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
f / ir,h; and the earth was without form and void; and 
darkness was on the face of the deep; and so on 
™g h a11 the details to the end of the account 
We can only infer that Adam knew these things It 
is no where stated that God made the facts known to 
him many supernatural way; and if we suppose that 
he did, it is nowhere stated that the revelation was* 
1,( ' at, ' ,, to an . v (,t ' °is posterity prior to the time of 
Moses. But the inference is reasonable that the belief 
of Adam in the supernatural origin of all things was 
founded on a supernatural revelation made to him, and 
that the behef of his posterity in the same was founded 
during his personal presence among them, on their 
confidence in him, and subsequently on their confidence 
m the tradition handed down from him and on the 
very inability of their minds to conceive either of ab- 
solute commencement or infinite non-commencement 
As soon, however, as this tradition, i„ its purity was 



54 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



lost, the element of pre-Mosaic religion which was 
founded upon it, also lost its supernatural character, 
and the religion became so far a mere natural religion 
like that <of any other heathen people. Even if we 
suppose that it was possible, it was not consonant with 
what we now know of the Divine plan, that the revela- 
tion of the supernatural origin of all things should be 
supernaturally made to every individual of Adam's 
posterity down to the time of Moses, only in so far as 
it had been made once for all in the very constitution 
of the human mind. 

Unless we suppose, then, that Moses, in writing 
Genesis, and particularly the first chapter of it, was 
merely putting on record something that had always 
been well known, we are obliged to conclude that the 
majority of those who lived before him had no more 
knowledge concerning the origin of things than was 
furnished by the unwritten book of nature interpreted 
in the light of a distorted and fading tradition. Whether 
this supposition concerning the relation of Moses to 
the first chapter of Genesis is tenable or not, it belongs 
to the province of criticism, rather than of Old Testa- 
ment theology, to decide. One thing, however, we 
may affirm: Moses was not a mere historian. He 
knew more than merely what had transpired in the 
centuries and ages past. He was progressive. He 
stood far in advance of his ancestors and of his con- 
temporaries. Through him were introduced various 
additions to old beliefs, and various innovations upon 
the old ethics and culture. And there is something 
in Jiis account of creation — in its grand silences, its un- 
paralleled literary merit, its marvelous scientific accu- 
racy, its simple yet transcendent dignity — there is 



THE PRE Mosaic PERIOD. . r ,r, 



something in it In .-ill respects, indeed, as compared 

with all the ancienl account- of the creation which have 
come down to as from the Babylonians, Persians, 
Egyptians and others, that leads as to believe thai 
there was in the vicinity of Moses when he wrote it 
down a Divine Revealer. lie was not simply record- 
ing an old Storv which he had learned in childhood at 
the knee of Joehehed. his mother. He was adding 

some entirely new factor to the knowledge and religion 

of his people. 

The exact date of the Chaldean account of the crea- 
tion i< a matter only of conjecture; hut it is known to 
he exceedingly ancient, and from it we may infer the 

character of view entertained \>y the pre-Mosaic peo- 
ples concerning the origin of the world. The author 
of Genesis make- no definite statement in regard to 
the matter in the subsequent chapters wherein he treats 

of the primeval races, though it 18 plainly implied that 

mankind had rapidly lost whatever dear knowledge on 
the subject may have been originally communicated to 
Adam. The following extract from the Chaldean Cre- 
ation Tablets was made \)\ Mr. II. F. Talbot, and 
published in volume III of the "Records of the Past." 
Many of these brick tablets, inscribed in cuneiform 
character, have been excavated within recent years 
from the buried ruins of Assyria and Babylonia by Mr. 
»rge Smith and other-. The one here quoted ap- 
pears to he a fragment of a creation poem, or epic, Bucfa 
a- some suppose the Mosaic account to he, though it 
falls far below the Latter in spirit, dignity, and relig- 
ious standpoint. It runs thus: 

"When the upper region was not yet called heaven; 
and the lower region was not yet called earth; and the 



56 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



abyss of hades had not yet opened its arms; then the 
chaos of waters gave birth to all of them, and the 
waters were gathered into one place. No men yet 
dwelt together; no animals had yet wandered about; 
none of the gods had yet been born; their names were 
not spoken; their attributes were not known. Then 
the eldest of the gods, Lakhmu and Lakamu, were 
born and grew up. . . Assur and Kissur were born 
next, and lived through long periods." 

In another tablet we have the following, correspond- 
ing to the Mosaic account of the creation of the 
heavenly bodies: 

" He constructed dwellings for the great gods. He 
fixed up constellations, whose figures were like animals. 
He made the year. Into four quarters he divided it. 
Twelve months he established, with their constellations 
three by three. 

"And for days of the year he appointed festivals. 
He made dwellings for the planets; for their rising 
and setting, and that nothing should go amiss, and that 
the course of none should be retarded, he placed with 
them the dwellings of Bel and Hea.* 

"He made strong the portals on the left hand and on 
the right. In the centre he placed luminaries. The 
moon he appointed to rule the night, and- to wander 
through the night until the dawn of day. Every 
month without fail he made holy assembly days. In 
the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, 
it shot forth its horns to illumine the heavens. 

* In the Assyrian hierarchy Assur was the supreme god. Anu, 
Bel, and Ea, were Creative powers, the last being the Lord of 
the Deep. Sin was the Moon-god; Shamas, the Sun-god; Rim 
mon, the Sky-god; Ishtar was the (planet) Venus-goddess; Adar, 
Saturn; Nergal, Mars; Nabu, Mercury. 



THE PRE U08AIG PBRWD. 



"On tin- seventh day he appointed h holy day; and 
to cease from all business be commanded. There arose 
the sun in the horizon of heaven in glory." 

The version of this Babylonian legend, or of another 
part of (he same, given by the ( lhaldean priest, Berosus, 
as quoted by Kusebius, is as follows: 

"In the beginning all was darkness and water, and 
therein were generated monstrous animals of Btrangc 
and peculiar forms. Tncre were men with two wings, 
and some even with four, and with two faces; and 
others with two heads a man's and a woman's on 
the same body; and there were men with the heads 
and horns of goats, and men with hoof- like horses, 
and some with the upper parts of a man joined to 
the lower parts of a horse, like centaurs; and there 
were hulls with human heads, dogs with four bodies 
and with the tails of fishes; men and horses with dogs 1 
heads; creatures with the heads and bodies of horses, 
hnt with fishes 1 tails, mixing the forms of various 
beasts. 

-Moreover, there were monstrous fishes and serpents, 
which had borrowed something from each other'- shapes, 

of all which the likenesses are still found in the temple 

of Belus. A woman ruled them all. by name Omorka, 
which is in Chaldea, Thalath, and in Greek, Thalassa 
(The Sea). Then Belus appeared and split the woman 
in twain; and of the one half of her he made the heaven, 
and of the other half the earth, and the beasts th.it were 
in her he caused to perish. And he Bplit the darkness, 
and divided the heaven and the earth asunder, and put 
the world in order, and the animal- that could not hear 
the light perished. 
"Belus, upon this, seeing that the earth was desolate, 



58 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



yet teeming with productive powers, commanded one 
of the gods to cut oft' his head, and to mix the blood 
which flowed forth with earth, and form men therewith, 
and beasts that could bear the light, So man was 
made, and was intelligent, being a partaker of the 
Divine wisdom. Likewise Belus made the stars, and 
the sun, and the moon, and the five planets." 

The legendary and polytheistic character of these 
accounts is obvious even to the casual reader; but they 
serve to illustrate what were probably the current 
views, outside of the sphere of revelation, in the prime- 
val times, in regard to the origin of the heaven and 
the earth, and all that in them is. We see in some of 
them at least, but only here and there, faint glimpses 
of the truth and grand simplicity which characterize 
the Scripture account throughout. The difference be- 
tween the two is as marked, as that of the darkened 
sun in the act of rising above the horizon, "shorne of 
its beams" by dense fog, and the noon-day sun shining 
with unobstructed splendor. And this difference can 
be accounted for only on the supposition that our 
Scripture narrative of the origin of things was the off- 
spring of much more than the mere natural and imag- 
inative genius of an oriental writer. So immeasurably 
inferior is the primeval cosmogony to the Mosaic, or 
Hebrew, that we are utterly forbidden to suppose that 
the latter could have been derived from Babylon or 
any other purely human source. But while some such 
views as the above were doubtless held by the majority 
of mankind in pre-Mosaic times, there were some, ;*s 
Noah and Abraham, who held the truth in much greater 
purity. 



THE PRB-M08A10 PERIOD. 



Tin Primeval Abode and Fall of Man. 

Here also we are in the region of conjecture and 
tradition. The sacred Scriptures no where inform us 
what views were held by the pre-Mosaic peoples in re- 
gard to the first state of man and the ori<nn of ovil. 
Traditions of a primitive state of innocence are trao- 
able to the earliest ages, some of them antedating, per- 
haps, not only the narrative of Gen. ii, 8 l ; :>, but also 
the dispersion of the tribes as recorded in Gen. xi: 
the common Bource from which all these traditions 
were drawn being, doubtless, the original account of 
the matter by Adam himself. 

'I hex- traditions, in some instances, diverge very far 
from the Scripture version of the facts, but thej -how 
that there must have been a wide-spread belief, even 
in the pre-Mosaic times, that man had not always been 
what he then was. It seems t<» have been the common 
belief that the first state of man was one of innocence 
and bliss. The tree of lifeand the tree of the knowli 
of good and evil, and the fall in all its details, appear 
in .".II these tradition-, nor are vestiges of the flaming 
-word and the cherubim wanting 

Nor are these traditions restricted to peoples of the 
Shemitic race. According to very ancient Aryan tra 
dition, "the first man passed hi- lit'.- in a Btate of bliss, 
until he committed the -in which weighs on bis descend- 
ants. For this he was driven out of paradise, after 
being a thousand years in it, and was given up to the 
dominion of the serpent, who finally brought about bis 
death by horrible torment-.*' According to the Zoro- 
astrian tradition, "the god, Ahuramazda, created man 
perfect and holy, and destined to immortal happim 



60 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

if he continued pure in thought, word, and deed, and 
humble in heart, He placed him in the best of dwell- 
ing places. At first he remained true to God; but 
later falsehood ran through his thoughts; for the evil 
spirit, the serpent, seduced first the woman and then 
the man to believe that they were indebted for all their 
blessings, not to God, but to him. Having thus led 
them astray, the deceiver, who had lied them to their 
ruin, grew more bold, and presented himself a second 
time, bringing them fruits which they ate, and by e.it- 
ing which they lost all the hundred blessings which 
they had save one, and were wicked and unhappy. 
They clothed themselves with the skins of animals 
which they killed, and offered the flesh as sacrifice." 

The early Chaldean account of the curse pronounced 
against the first offenders after their transgression, in 
so far as it has been ascertained, runs as follows: 

The Lord of the earth called his name; the Father 
llu in the ranks of the angels pronounces the curse. 
The god Hea heard, and his liver grew angry, because 
the man had corrupted his purity. Thus (spake) Hea: 
u How can I punish — (How can I) destroy all my race!" 
In the language of the fifty great gods, by their fifty 
names he calls them, and he turns himself from him 
(man) in wrath. "Let him be overcome and destroyed 
at a blow," (said he). "Let wisdom and science be 
against him and hurt him. Let enmity be between 
father and son. Let robbery abound; Let them bend 
their ear to their king, their chief, their ruler; Let 
them thus anger the Lord of the gods, Merodach. Let 
the earth produce, but let no man eat of its bounty. 
Let his desires be frustrated; his will be unaccom- 
plished. Let no god take heed when he opens his 



THE PRE mosaic PERIOD. 61 



mouth. Lei his back be hurt and not oared. Let do 
god hear the piercing cry of his anguish, Let his In-art 
faint and his soul be troubled." 

"The ancient Egyptians looked back on the terres 
trial reign of the g< d Ra as a time of such purity and 
happiness that they were worn to speak of anything 
especially perfect as having been unequaled since the 
days of thai god." The heathen Hesiod, who wrote 
eight or nine hundred years beforeOhrist, in his Works 
and Days, thus echoes a tradition many centuries older 
than himself: "So at first lived the race of earth-tilling 
men, Kept far from suffering or from weary toil; and 
from sad disease which brings death to mankind; for 

trouble make- mortals early errow old 

Easily then would they do in one day the work, the 
work which now needs a full year, and tllat often 
profitless." 

But this happy state did not last long. The god he- 
came offended. 

'•The earth around is full of evil, and so is the wide 
sea. Diseases a- well, by day and also by night, Ap- 
proach unhidden and bring evils to mortals. They 
come still and softly, forZeus Kronion ha- made them 
dumb." 

We are not concerned here with the resemblam 
and contrasts which these legends bear to the Mosaic 
account. They are doubtless a fair illustration of the 
beliefs in regard to the subject- of which they treat, 
entertained by the pro-Mosaic peoples who lived out 
Bide of the range of pre-Mosaic revelation. From 
Adam t<> the Deluge, according to the ordinary chro 
nology, was a period of 1656 years. At the expiration 
of this time the population of the earth must have been 



62 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

many millions, according even to the present laws of 
human increase. Many millions more had probably 
died before the flood came. Only a few of this im- 
mense number could come under the immediate tuition 
of the few who may have received immediate revela- 
tion from God concerning the primitive happy state of 
innocence, and the subsequent fall of man. In like 
manner, from the flood to the time of Moses was a 
period of about eight hundred and fifty years. At the 
expiration of this time, the population of the earth was 
doubtless as great as it was at the time of the flood. 
In four hundred years, or less than half of the whole 
time, the one family of Abraham numbered 600,000 
adult men. During the first four hundred years after 
the Deluge it is not related that any man received a 
direct revelation. Whatever information may have 
been received from Noah would rapidly become dis- 
torted as men multiplied and proceeded further and 
further from the original central home. 

We are definitely informed by the author of Genesis 
that Abraham and subsequent patriarchs of the same 
family did receive immediate revelations; but these 
revelations were matters of faith, even to them, and 
were not of such character or contents as to have a 
beneficial influence on any of their contemporaries. 
Even had he admitted it to be a fact, it would have 
been a matter of no especial interest to the Canaanite, 
for example, to know that Abraham had received a 
revelation from God to the effect that he should have 
a son of promise, whose seed should become a mighty 
nation and occupy the same country where they them- 
selves then were; and whatever evangelistic element 
the revelation may have been understood to involve, it 



THE PRE MOSAIC PERIOD. 






ifl not related that the patriarchs sought to impose if 
nponj or promulgate it among, their neighbors. Ii is 
reasonable to suppose, therefore, that at the time the 
authorof Genesis recorded the revelations which he 
himself received, mankind generally knew nothing but 
the distorted traditions whirl, Mill lingered among 
them in one form or another. 

§3. Th, Noachic Qektge. 

Afi our ob J^ j " the preceding sections was to dis- 
cuss, not the accounts of the subjects therein treated 
as revealed in the book of Genesis, but the views enter 
tained concerning them before the Mosaic revelation 
was recorded; so, also, our object here is to present the 
views concerning the Noachic flood, which were cur- 
rent before the time of Moses. 

Traditions concerning this undoubtedly historical 
event are found among all the nations of the earth 
Even if we had no proof thai any of these tradition. 
antedated the book of Genesis, we might Mill infer 
from them what the pre-Mosaic view of the matter was, 
.•it least as held by peoples living outside the sphere of 
pre-Mosaic revelations. There is no reason, however, 
that we should suppose that even Buch a "friend of 
God" as Abraham was, by a supernatural revelation, 
kept fn.ni error in regard to the details of an historical 
fact of this character. The population of theearth in 
that age, though doubtless reaching many millions, was 
not sufficiently scattered to render us particularly in 
terested, so far as our present line of thought iscoh- 
eerned, in any of the numerous and very ancient tra 
ditions, except those of peoples living in the vicinity of 
the original home of the race. 



64 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



Among the tablets discovered by Mr. George Smith, 
in excavating the ruins of Nineveh, and the royal 
library there, were found some relating to the great 
flood. The original texts of these tablets is decided 
by Assyrian scholars to date back at least four hundred 
years before the time of Moses It appears to have 
belonged, in the first place, to the city of Erech, men- 
tioned in Genesis x. 10, as being one of the capitals of 
Nimrod, from which city it was subsequently removed 
to enrich the king's library at Nineveh. 

According to the legends deciphered from these tab- 
lets, Izdubar was a king, or leading man, who lived near 
the time of the great deluge, and belonged to Erech, the 
ruins of which, lying about ninety-five miles south-east 
from Babylon, are now called Warka. Izdubar was 
smitten with leprosy, and began to fear death. To 
escape such a fate, he wandered forth in search of a 
patriarch named Sisit (or Khasisatra), whom the Baby- 
lonians supposed to have become immortal without 
having died, to consult him concerning a cure. After 
sailing down the Euphrates a month and fifteen days, 
he came to a place near the mouth of the river, where 
Khasisatra was supposed to dwell. Izdubar makes 
known his request, but must converse across a stream 
which divided the mortal and the immortal from each 
other. The latest, and, in some of the details, the best 
translation of Khasisatra's reply to Izdubar, is that of 
Prof. Haupt. The one here given is substantially that 
of Prof. Lenormant: 

"I will reveal to thee, O Izdubar, the history of my 
preservation, and tell the decision of the gods. The 
town of Shurippak, which, thou knowest, is on the 
Euphrates. It was ancient, and in it men did not honor 



THE PUE-M08A1C PERIOD, 65 

the gods-. I alone was a servant of the greal gods. 
The gods took counsel on the appeal of Ann. A del- 
age was proposed by Bel and approved by Nabon, 
Nergal and Adar. And the god Ea, the immutable 
lord, repeated this command to me in a dream: 

" 'Man of Shurippak, build a vessel, and finish it 
quickly. I will destroy life and Bubstance by a deluge. 
Cause thou to go up into the vessel the substance of 
all that has life. The vessel thou shall build 600 
cubits shall be the measure of its length, and ♦'><> the 
measure of its breadth and of its height. Launch it 
thus on the ocean, and cover it with a roof.' 

"I understood, and said to Ivi: AIv lord, when I 
shall build it, young and old will laugh at me.' 

"Ea opened his mouth and spake: 'If they laugh at 
thee, thou shalt say to them: He who has insulted me 
shall be punished, for the protection of the gods is over 
me. I will exercise my judgment on that which is on 
high, and on that which is below. Close the vessel, 
enter into it. and draw the door of the ship toward 
thee. Within it thy grain, furniture, provisions, 
thy man servants, maid-servants, young people, the 
cattle of thy fields, and wild beasts, which I will assem- 
ble and Bend 1<> thee/ 

u On the fifth day the two sides of the bark were 
raised. The rafters in its coverings were in all four- 
teen. I placed its roof and I covered it. ... I 
stopped up the chinks through which the water entered 
in. I poured on the outside three times 3,600 meas- 
ures of asphalt, and three times 3,600 measures of as- 
phalt within. Three times 3,600 men porters broughl 
on their heads the chests of provisions. I kept 3,600 
chestsfor the nourishment of nay family, and the mari- 



66 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ners divided among them twice 3,600 chests. For 
provisioning I had oxen slain; I appointed rations for 
each day. . . . All that I possessed I gathered to- 
gether — of silver, of gold, of the substance of life of 
every kind. I made my servants male and female, the 
cattle of the fields, the wild beasts, and the sons of the 
people, all ascend into the ship. Shamas fixed the 
moment, and he announced it in these terms: 'In the 
evening I will cause it to rain abundantly from heaven; 
enter into the vessel and close the door.' .... 
Mu-sheri-ina-namari rose from the foundations of 
heaven in a black cloud; Eamman thundered in the 
midst of the cloud. Nabon and Shurru marched be- 
fore — they marched, devastating the mountain and the 
plain. Nergal, the powerful, dragged the chastise- 
ments after him. Adar advanced, overthrowing before 
him. The archangels of the abyss brought destruc- 
tion. By their terrors they agitated the earth. The 
flood of Eamman swelled up to the sky, and the earth, 
grown dark, became like a desert. They destroyed 
the living beings on the surface of the earth. The ter- 
rible deluge swelled up toward heaven. The brother 
no longer saw his brother. Men no longer knew each 
other. In heaven the gods became afraid of the water- 
spouts, and sought a refuge. They mounted up to the 
heaven of Anu. . . . Ishtar wailed like a child. 
The great goddess pronounced this discourse: 'Here is 
mankind returned to the earth, and theirs is the mis- 
fortune I have announced in presence of the gods. . 
. . I am the mother who gave birth to men, and 
there they are filling the sea like the races of fishes; 
and the gods on their seats, by reason of that which 
the archangels of the abyss are doing, weep with me.' 



THE PRB-M08AIC PBBIOD, ffl 



The gods on their seats wen in tears, and held their 
lips closed, revolving things to come. Six days pa* 
and as many nights; the Wind, the waterspouts and the 
deluge-rain, were in all their strength. At the ap- 
proach of the seventh day the deluge-rain grew weaker 
the terrible waterspout, which had been awful a- an 
earthquake, grew calm, the sea began to dry up, and 
the wind and the waterspout came to an end. I looked 
at the Sea, attentively observing, and the whole iace of 
man had returned to earth; the oorpses floated like sea- 
weed. I opened the window, and the light smote on 
my face. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and 

wept, and the tears came over my face. I looked at 

the region bounding the sea, toward the twelve points 
of the horizon, but there was no land. The vessel was 
home above the land of Nizir— the mountains of Nizir 
arrested the vessel, and did not permit it to pass over. 

For Bix days they fyus .Mopped it. At ihe approach of 
the seventh day I sent Out and loosed a dove Tin- 
dove went, turned, and found no place to light on, and 
came hack. I sent out and loosed a swallow; and it 
went out, turned, and finding no place to rest on. came 
hack. I sent out and loosed a raven; the raven went, 
and saw the corpses on the waters; it ate, rested, 
turned, and came not hack. I then sent out the civa 
tures in the vessel toward the four winds, and offered 
a sacrifice. [ raised the pile of my burnt offering on 
the ])eak of the mountain. Seven by seven 1 laid the 
measured vessels, and beneath I spread rushes, cedar- 
wood and juniper. The gods were seized with the de- 
sire to go to it -with a benevolent desire for it. They 
assembled like flies above the master of the sacrifice. 
From afar, in approaching, the great goddess raised 



68 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the great zones that Anu made for the glory of the 
gods. These gods, luminous as crystal, I will never 
leave — I prayed in that day that I might never leave 
them. Let the gods come to my sacrificial pile! But 
never may Bel come to it, for he did not master him- 
self, for he made the waterspout for the deluge, and 
he remembered men for the pit. From far, in draw- 
ing near, Bel saw the vessel and stopped. He was 
filled with anger against the gods and against the heav- 
enly archangels. No one shall come out alive! No 
man shall be preserved from the abyss. Adar opened 
his mouth and said — he said to the warrior Bel: 'Who 
other than Ea should have found this resolution ? ' for 
Ea possessed knowledge and all. Ea opened his mouth 
and spake; he said to the warrior .Bel: 'O, thou, herald 
of the gods, warrior — as thou didst not master thyself, 
thou hast made the waterspout of the deluge. Let the 
sinner carry the weight of his sins; the blasphemer the 
weight of his blasphemy. Please thyself with this 
good pleasure, and it shall never be infringed. . 
Instead of thy making a new deluge, let lions and hy- 
enas appear and reduce the number of men; let there 
be famine, and let the earth be . . . ; let Dibbara 
appear, and let men be mown down. I have not re- 
vealed the decision of the great gocls; it is Khasisatra 
who interpreted a dream, and comprehended what the 
gods had decided. ' Then, when his resolve was ar- 
rested, Bel entered into the vessel, and took my hand, 
and made me rise. He made my wife rise and place 
herself at my side. He walked around me and stopped 
short. He approached our group. Until now Khasi- 
satra had been mortal, but now he and his wife are 
going to be carried away to live like the gods, and he 



THE PRB-M08AIC PERIOD 68 

will live afar, at the mouth of the rivers. They carried 
me away, and established me in a remote place, at the 
mouth of the streams.' 1 

§4. The Dispersion of tlu Nations, 

The water- of the flood having abated, the ark rested 
on one of the mountain-tops of the Ararat range, lo- 
cated, doubtless, in the country afterward known as 
Armenia: Here Noah and his family, eight souls in 
all. began life anew in the new world. To Japheth 
seven Bona were born; to Shem five, and to Ham four. 
How long these solitary families remained in their firsl 
homes on the mountain side, or in the valley- of Ar- 
menia, we have no means of knowing. Doubtless, the 
locality of the first settlements of the three sons was 
never afterward without a population; nor is it in the 
least improbable that this population was distinctively 
and predominantly neither Japhetic, nor Shemitic, nor 
Hamitic. It is not likely that it was predominantly 
either the one or another, in respect either to blood or 
language; nor is it further likely that the language 
which this population spoke ever underwent any other 
changes than BUCh a- are brought about by the ordi- 
nary working of natural causes. 

Probably many years passed away before any migra- 
tions occurred. The youngest -on of Ham was already 
a lad when the incident related in (rem ix. 20 29 took 
place; and the migrations did not begin until the popu- 
lation had considerably increased. The very solitari- 
ness of their situation in the unpeopled earth would 
strongly tend to hold the few together, notwithstand 
ing the animosity which the prophecj of Noah, con- 
cerning Canaan, would probably produce in the bosom 



70 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

of Ham, and in that of Canaan, also, as he grew 
older. 

As their posterity increased, the necessity ror physi- 
cal maintenance, and the growing spirit of adventure, 
would gradually and naturally bring about a disper- 
sion of the population. Some would find their way to 
the other side of the mountain, would be pleased and 
settle there; while others in turn would push further 
down the valleys, and establish new settlements. In 
this way, they scattered abroad over the face of the 
whole land, and more and more mangled the tradition 
of their father Noah, whom the majority of them had 
never seen, though he lived three hundred and fifty 
years after the flood. Japheth's posterity drifted 
northward and westward, while Shem's and Ham's 
moved southward. This was not because of any far- 
reaching or prophetic preference on their part for one 
direction rather than another. Neither could in the 
least degree foresee the effect which his movement 
would have upon the history of his posterity. We 
may admit, or affirm, that the whole matter was provi- 
dential, but they doubtless consulted only present in- 
clination or convenience. The descendants of Japheth 
passed out of history, and remained concealed there- 
from for centuries. It does not concern us to speak of 
them here. 

While the lines of posterity of the three sons of 
Noah were in the main kept distinct, it is quite prob- 
able that during the first generations, especially, inter- 
marriages were by no means uncommon; and it is also 
probable that they continued to be frequent on the bor- 
der lines between the races, and in already mixed set- 
tlements. Especially was this true in the early Bible 



THE PRR-M08A10 PERIOD. 71 



lauds, where we have to do more particularly with the 
descendants of Shem and Ham; though it is probable 
that the tribal name of the father wafl in all 111- 
Btances assumed by the son, making many Bo-called 
Shemites, or Bamites, in reality mixed bloods. 

As the pic— nrc of increasing population would pro- 
duce divergencies in all directions from the old central 
homes, so these divergencies would in turn produce 
differences of Bpeech, at first amounting only to dia- 
lectical peculiarities, but gradually acquiring the prom- 
inence of distinct languages. It would naturally fol- 
low also that some of these dialects, or Languages. 
would be distinctly neither Japhetic, nor Hamitic, nor 
Shemitic, but would partake to a greater or less extent 
of the peculiarities of one or another, according to the 
locality, and other circumstances, of the people speak- 
ing it, and in certain instances the peculiarities might 
be so evenly balanced as to render it difficult for philo- 
logists to decide where the language ought rather to 
be classed. Some Hamites, by reason of their asso- 
ciations, might -peak a distinctively Shemitic tongue; 
some Shemites might speak a Hamitic dialect; and so 
also might it be with the descendants of Japheth. The 
early posterity of Abraham, the Phoenicians, and the 
Ganaanitish tribe- seem to have spokeo the same Lan- 
guage, thougb the first mentioned only were Shemitic 
by blood. Nor, indeed, is there any intimation that 
Abraham found the Language of Canaan, into the midst 
of which he came, different, to any considerable extent, 
from that of Chaldea. the country from which he came.* 

*"The Canaanites, however," says Prof. Sayce, "spake a 
Semitic language, and belonged to the Semitic, in the modem 
ethnological sense of the word. Like the Arabs, the Assyrians 
the Arnneans and the Hebrews, their primitive seat was probably 



72 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



We may form an approximate estimate, perhaps, of 
the increase of population, and hence of the growth of 
linguistic and tribal divergencies, and the increasing 
necessity of some sort of organized government, in the 
following manner: Supposing the average number of 
sons born to the successive generations of Shem, Ham, 
and Japheth, to have been five, and supposing the av- 
erage age at marriage to have been twenty-five years; 
allowing for no deaths, the male population of the earth 
one hundred and fifty years after the flood, or in the 
days of Rue, the son of Peleg, would be 312,500, which 
sum is obtained by simple process of geometrical 
progression, carried through six generations, the con- 
stant ratio being five, and then by adding together the 
several products — remembering that there were sixteen 
grandsons of Noah, to begin with. 

It is easy to see that at the expiration of two hundred 
years, or about the time of Terah's birth, the popula- 
tion would be 7,812,500, or twice as many including 
females. The probability is that it was not less than 
this, even after making due allowance for deaths; es- 
pecially when we take into consideration the facts that 
death-producing causes were not so numerous then, 

on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf. Elam, though geo- 
graphically connected with the countries inhabited by their 
kinsfolk, had a population which spake agglutinative languages, 
and bore no ethnological relationship to the Semitic tribes of 
Babylonia and Assyria." The Philistines, according to the same 
writer, were a tribe of Phoenician extraction, who settled in 
Caphtor, the Egyptian Keftur, or "greater Phoenicia," a title 
given to the coast-land of the delta, in consequence of its large 
Semitie population, which had been established there at an early 
period. They were planted by the Pharaohs in the five* cities of 
southern Palestine, in order to garrison the country for Egypt. — 
Sunday School Times, Jan. 15. 1887. See Am. ix. 7, 



THE PRB-M08A10 PERIOD. 78 



and the prolonged vigor and the great age to which 
man lived for several fenerations after the flood. And. 
indeed, an immense population is required, perhaps 
even greater than the above calculation gives, to meet 
the demands of the very ancient empires which Egyp- 
tian, Assyrian and Hittite inscriptions have brought to 
light It is not possible, however, th.it such a rate of 
increase as we have supposed could have continued more 
than a few generations. As the race multiplied, war, 
famine and pestilence would find their way among 
men, and greatly check the growing population. 

However incorrect the above figures may he. the 
illustration enables us to see that it was not merely a 
migratory whim, hut a necessity as well, that caused 
mankind at a comparatively early period "to scatter 
abroad upon the face of all the earth." They carried 
with them the tradition of the flood, which rapidly be- 
came distorted, as it was repeated from mouth to 
mouth; and doubtless some of the tribes transformed 
Noah, its chief hero, whom they had never seen, into a 
<rod or demi-god long before his death. There is no 
conclusive reason for believing that Noah was unac- 
quainted with the art of writing ; but if he was 
acquainted with it, any account of the flood, or other 
events, which he may have put on permanent record, 
was inscribed on material too cumbersome to be dis- 
seminated among many readers, and equally a- -mail 
a number would be reached by his oral instructions. 

Shem lingered for the most part in the vicinity of 
the old home, his two son-, Ashur and Aram, giving 
their name- to the closely neighboring countries of 
Assyria and Padan-Aram, or Syria. In the midst of 
their brethren of Ashur and Aram settled the line- of 



74 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Arphaxed and Lud. Elam's sons moved southward 
and gave their father's name to the country on the 
east bank of the Tigris opposite Babylonia. They 
developed into a tribe of considerable power, but were 
subsequently overrun by the Kissians, or Cushites. 
They preserved their tribal identity, however, and 
Chedorlaomer appears as their chieftain in the days of 
Abraham. (Gen. xiv, 1). Susa, or Shushan, became 
their capital city, and is thought to have been founded 
before the days of Chedorlaomer. 

Colonies of Hamites were planted on the Orontes 
and the countries about Mount Lebanon. Kadesh 
became their western capital and Carchemish the east- 
ern. These were the sons of Heth, the Hittites of the 
Bible, extensive colonies of whom were also made 
among other descendants of Ham in Canaan, and per- 
haps even as far south as Egypt*, this latter country, 
however, being settled chiefly by the posterity of Miz- 
raim and Cush, the former of whom gave to it his 
name. Cushite settlements were also established in 
Southern Arabia, about the Persian Gulf, and along 
the lower Euphrates, though doubtless many Shemites 
had previously settled along the same river in the 
vicinity of its confluence with the Tigris. Possibly, 
indeed, the first principal Cushite settlement was made 
here in the lower Euphrates country, and that the 
Southern Arabic and African Cushites were offshoots 
from it. At any rate, both philological and ethnolog- 
ical data lead to the conclusion that Cushite colonies 
were established in Babylonia at a very early period, 
but whether before or after the Arabian and African 
settlements is a question which cannot be determined 

*Wright's Hittite Empire. 



THE PRE-M0SA1C PERIOD. 



with certainty. (Jen. xi, 2 is not decisive, Beeming to 

admit, as it doc-, of different interpretations. It may 
mean simply that they— ^hese Cushitee — journeyed 
forward, from whatever direction, and "found a plain 
in the land of Shinar," the old name for Babylonia, 
where they settled. And doubtless there were gath- 
ered there adventurous spirits from other tribes than 
that of Cush, though it Is not likely that either Noah 
or Slum was among them. 

In connection with the Cushite settlements in Baby- 
lonia Nimrod first appears. He was the grandson of 
Ham. He was probably born not Less than fifty years 
after the flood, though possibly more, as he was the 
>()ii of Ham's third son, Cush. He acted a conspicu- 
ous pari in the history of his generation, and espec- 
ially of his tribe, even as he has done still more 
conspicuously in subsequent fable. We do not know 
that Nimrod built the tower of Babel. This daring 
work, resulting in the supernatural "confusion of 
tongues" and the dispersion of those engaged in it, 
may have been wrought by his immediate prede- 
cessors, and his own small empire 4 founded on the 
ruins of theirs. But this is the most probable view. 
Aside from the improbability of any settlements in the 
neighborhood prior to Nimrod being sufficiently strong 
to undertake BUCh a work, local tradition has from 
time immemorial assigned a high tower to Nimrod, 
and there is no sufficient reason to believe that it is not 
the towei- of Gen. xi. 

We do not know when the tower was begun. It 
could scarcely have been more or less than two hun- 
dred year- after the tlood. At this time, a- we have 
seen above, the total population of the earth would, on 



76 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

a reasonable calculation, amount to several millions, 
and that of the district of country with which we are 
now concerned might amount to many thousands. At 
this time also, as men then lived, Nimrod would be in 
his prime. His physical prowess, and boldness, and 
enterprise of spirit would soon bring him to the front 
in those primeval times. He became a mighty hunter, 
first of beast and then doubtless of men, for perhaps 
the wild beasts since the flood had multiplied as rap- 
idly as man had. He became a mighty hunter before 
Jehovah, the traditional meaning of which is in defi- 
ance of Jehovah, and there is yet no sufficient reason 
to discard this meaning. He was the Hercules of his 
day; and the power which he asserted over wild beasts 
would naturally soon be asserted over men. 

The writer of Genesis informs us (Gen. x, 10) that 
the chief cities of his kingdom were Babel, Erech, 
Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. ■ The first 
of these is generally identified with the city afterwards 
called Babylon, and seems to- have been the seat of the 
most active opposition to the God of Shem, which 
resulted in the miraculous introduction of such discord 
and confusion among them as doubtless greatly weak- 
ened the Cushite authority in that region. Although 
it is not known exactly at what time the "confusion of 
tongues" occurred, it is pretty clearly made out that 
the Cushite rule was displaced about the year 2,000 
B. C, or 348 years after the flood, by the Shemitic, 
which continued as distinctly Shemitic, or Elamitic, or 
Arabian, until the year 1,300 B. C, or until about the 
time of Joshua's death. That the discord in Babel had 
something to do with the displacement of the Cushite 
rule we can only conjecture. 



THE PRE-MOSAW PERIOD. 



Erech, another of the principal cities of Ximrod. 
musi be identified with the modern Harka, some eighty 
miles southeast from Babyjon. The presence there of 
numerous mounds and remains of bricks and coffins in- 
dicates that it was the necropolis, perhaps of very an 
eient kings. Aeead, tlie third Cushite, orNimrodian 
city mentioned, is more difficult of identification. It 
was, without doubt, within the rather narrow limits 
of ancient Babylon, as the other three cities were. 
Rawlinson believes that the same city has been discov 
ercd in the inscriptions under the form of Kinzi Akkad 
(Rawl. Herod, i. 4. 49). He also thinks that the name 
"Akkad," or '-Akkadian," was the name by which the 
great primitive Ilamitic race who inhabited Babylonia 
from the earliest times called themselves, and "who 
originated the arts and sciences, and whose language 
was the great parent stock from which the trunk 
stream of the Shemitic tongues sprang." (Rawl. Herod. 
i. 319). Calneh is identified with the modem Niffer, 
about Bixty miles southeast of Babylon, and may, in- 
stead of Babylon, have been the place where the great 
tower was built, and where Ximrod "endeavored to 
mount on eagles' wings to heaven." Thus the LXX. 
and Arabic tradition. Calneh, or Calno, is mentioned 
several times in the Scripture, and seems to have 
finally lost its prosperity eight or nine hundred years 
15. C. 

But Ximrod seems to have been too ambitious to re 
strict hi- enterprise within the narrow limits of Shinar. 
He invaded the territory to the north, which bore the 
name of Shem's -on Ashur, and which had been settled 
doubtless chiefly by the Shemites. It was more nearly 
in the vicinity of the original home of Noah and his 



78 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

three sons. Here Nimrod founded, or enlargeo* the 
cities of Nineveh, Calah, Rehoboth and Resen, which 
rapidly grew to be great cities, as the size of cities was 
then reckoned. Nineveh and Calah both became resi- 
dences of the Assyrian kings long after Nimrod and 
his dynasty had departed; and both have furnished 
large proportions of the Assyrian remains at present 
in England. Mosul, on the river Tigris, is the modern 
name of Nineveh, while Calah is identified with the 
Nimrud remains about twenty miles distant. 

But the empire of Nimrod crumbled 2000 years before 
Christ. He himself rapidly passed into fable, even as 
his parallel, Orion or Hercules, among the western 
sons of Japheth, did after him. On the ruins of his 
empire was gradually reared the confederacy of petty 
Semitic kingdoms mentioned in Genesis x, Id. The 
old Nimrodian cities of Babel, Erech, Accad and Cal- 
neh passed into the hands of Amraphal, who is called 
king of Shinar, and who, indeed, may have been a 
Cushite, but whose kingdom was small and lustreless, 
as compared with the former one of Nimrod. The 
lion-like Arioch held sway over the neighboring city 
of Ellasar; while Tidal, or Thurgal, was the great chief 
of various Shemitic and mixed tribes of both upper and 
lower Chaldea, who as yet laid claim to no well-defined 
territory. All these, and perhaps other petty kings, 
were united under the more powerful sway of Chedor- 
laomer, the Shemitic king of the country which bore 
the name of Shem's son, Elam. under whose leadership 
Canaan was invaded, and its chief cities, Sodom, Go- 
morrah, Admah and Zeboim reduced to subjection. 
Such is a brief sketch of the condition of political 
affairs in the chief Bible lands in the eighteenth century 



THE PRE-M08AI0 PERIOD ra 



before Christ, or about the time the Lord said unto 
Abraham, "Gel thee oaf of thy country, and from 
among thy kindred, into a land which ] will show 
thee." The theology and religion of the period remain 
to be discussed in the following sections. 

§5. Abraham Befon His CaU. 

It falls within our scope to treat of tha patriarch 
Abraham at present only in brief, and chiefly before 
his appearance within the sphere of revelation, between 
which and the outside he is the connecting link. 

Abraham, one branch of whose posterity became the 
depository of a permanent supernatural revelation, was 
horn about three hundred and fifty war- after the 
flood, or about the year of Noah's death. He was 
contemporary with Shem one hundred and fifty rears, 
though we have no means of knowing whether he ever 
saw that patriarch. Abraham descended from Shem 
through the line of Arphaxad, the names of the inter- 
vening patriarchs being recorded for the important 
purpose of preserving the genealogical chain un- 
broken. 

Abraham was most probably not the first, but the 
third son of Terah; and there is uothing intrinsically 

improbable in the old tradition that during forty years 
of his life he was contemporary with the great chief- 
tain, Ximrod. and that he was the object of the latter's 
idolatrous persecution. We do not know where Abra- 
ham was born. The original seat of the tribe to which 
he belonged lay either on the border line of the terri- 
tories called by the-names of Ashur and Aram, or in 
southern Armenia, inthecountry known to the Greets 
and Romans as Arrapacbitis 'a supposed corruption of 



80 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the name Arphaxad or Arpachshad). It lay immedi- 
ately south of the modern city of Kars, and is to-day 
"a tangle of wild hills, rising often to great heights, 
but intersected by fruitful valleys." 

That either of these districts, however, was the native 
place of Abraham himself is not the most probable 
view. The family, or perhaps* the tribe or clan to 
which he belonged had, before he was born, left the 
hill country of the north, and settled in the grassy 
plains of lower Chaldea, in the city, or in the vicinity 
of the city of Ur, — most probably identical with Mug- 
heir, a city situated southeast of Babylon, and east of 
the Euphrates. It was one of the most ancient, and, at 
the time of Abraham, one of the most splendid cities of 
the territory which constituted the kingdom of Nimrod. 
The name u Ur" has been repeatedly found in the rains 
of Mugheir, and the remains of an old temple — old 
even in Abraham's time — are still to be seen there. 

The life of Abraham in Chaldea seems, however, to 
have been more nearly contemporary with that of king 
Sargon I., one of the early Shemitic successors of 
Nimrod. Even at this early period the arts and 
sciences had begun to be cultivated. Astronomers 
were already watching the heavens; poets were com- 
posing hymns and epics; and patient scribes were 
stamping on soft clay tablets the books which have in 
part come down to our day. The remains of extensive 
libraries have been unearthed at Ur and several neighbor- 
ing cities which date back to the time of Abraham. The 
accounts of the creation, flood, etc., given on a preced- 
ing page, are extracts from some of these tablet books. 

Ur seems to have been the seat of an elaborate idol- 
atry, the chief object of worship being the moon, 



TUB PRE-MOSAW PERIOD. si 

which was perfected and enforced by the powerful 
kinir. SargOD I. Here lived Terah and his tribe, out- 
side of the city walls, doubtless, an influential sheik, 
Leading his flocks and his herdsmen about the rich 
neighboring plains. Here Haran, his son, died. When 
he was advanced in year-, he and his two sons, Nahor 
and Abraham, with their followers, moved gradually 
northward, and finally located at Charran, in Mesopo- 
tamia. Here Terah died at the age of two hundred 
and five years; after which Abraham, severing his 
connection forever with Nahor, his brother, emigrated 
with Lot, his nephew, and their herdsmen, to Canaan. 
At this time Abraham first appears within the sphere 
of revelation, being already seventy-five years of age. 



Chapter II. 

THE PRE-MOSAIC THEOLOGY AND RELIGION. 

We must distinguish here, in the first place, between 
the points of doctrine and worship which were known 
in the pre-Mosaic ages, and those which were made 
known for the first time through Moses. And in the 
second place, we should also distinguish between the 
points of doctrine and worship as recognized by some 
members of the narrow lines of Seth and Shem on the 
one hand and mankind generally on the other. 

§ 1. Theology and Worshi/p <>f the Antedeluviam. 
We are entirely ignorant, and must ever remain so, 
concerning the details of whatever system of faith 
and worship may have been in general vogue during 
the antedeluvian ages. God revealed himself to Adam 
and Eve both before and after the fall; and they rec- 



82 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ognized him as the Creator of the heaven and the earth 
and all things in them, and as the Being to whom they 
were morally responsible, and as One who had pledged 
that thev and their posterity should be redeemed in 
some way, perhaps not well understood by them, from 
the evil which they themselves had introduced. This 
is evident from the Mosaic account of the fall, the dis- 
cussion of which, however, belongs rather to the Mo- 
saic period. But certain expressions occur in the first 
chapters of Genesis which may here be noticed, as they 
furnish us glimpses of the faith and practice of the peo- 
ples who lived many centuries before these chapters 
were written. 

1. Gen. iv, 1. On the occasion of the birth of 
Cain, Eve speaks of the Divine Being by the signifi- 
cant covenant name of Jehovah, which fact indicates 
not the Jehovistic authorship of Gen. iv, but Eve's 
knowledge of Jehovah's nearness and of the peculiar 
redemptive relation into which he had condescended to 
enter with man*. This is true, whether Eve thought 
she saw in the infant Cain the promised ' 'seed of the 
woman," or not. Whether Eve actually used the very 
term ' 'Jehovah" is a question of little importance, for 
the writer of Gen. iv, 1 evidently intends that we shall 
understand that she either said Jehovah, or a word of 
equivalent import of which Jehovah was the exact 
translation. If this be not true, language is not a reli- 
able guide. If the chapter was indeed written by a 
Jehovistic writer, then he put the word Jehovah into 
Eve's mouth because it was the only word which truly 
represented the idea in her mind. 

*As we shall frequently be under the necessity of using the 
names Jehovah and Elohim in subsequent pages, it might as 



TUB PRE MOSAIC PERIOD. 88 

2. Verses 3, 4. In the sacrifices of Cain and Abel 
we also sec a recognition of the Divine Being, and of 
man's relation to him of dependence and responsibil- 
ity; and though we have no further information con- 
cerning sacrifices until after the Flood — some sixteen 
centuries later — the very fact that they do then re- 
appear in the Biblical history is some evidence that 
such symbolical recognition of human sinfulness and 
that there must in some way be a propitiation and a 
Loving expression of gratitude, had riot entirely disap- 
peared prior to that event. As sacrifice is with 
strange accord the c 'central point in the religion of all 
ancient peoples," so must it have been in the case of 
the antedeluvians. However totally the majority of 
these may have lost the knowledge of the true God, 
and abandoned all worship of him, there were perhaps 
always some who continued faithful in their allegiance 
to him. 

3. Gen. iv, 26. This is another important passage 
in this connection. Here the name Jehovah occurs 
again, and in the same sense as above in the mouth of 
Eve. Then men began, or it was begun, to call upon 
the Divine Being by a name used then in the same 
sense as the name Jehovah was used at the time of the 
writer. We must suppose that this writer here em- 
well be said here that: Jehovah in the Hebrew Bible designates 
the Divine Being regarded as standing in redemptive relation to 
his people; while the name Elohim, as contrasted with Jehovah, 
regards Him simply as the Deity or God of the world. The two 
terms, however, are often used interchangeably. By "Jeho- 
vistic author" is meant that supposed writer of a part of the 
Pentateuch who was partial to the use of the name Jehovah; the 
"Elohistic author" was another supposed writer who preferred 
the name Elohim, — suppositions which we do not think it nec- 
essary to adopt. 



84 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ploye^l the term Jehovah, not at all because he was the 
Jehovistic author of the document in which this pas- 
sage occurs, but that he employed it advisedly as the 
best theological representative of the word in actual 
use in the days of Enos — which word in the particular 
connection referred to was neither Elohim nor its 
equivalent. The Divine Being was still recognized in 
this two hundred and fiftieth year from the creation of 
Adam, not merely as Creator, or not merely as Divin- 
ity, but also as One who stood in a particularly gracious 
relation to man. 

The phrase "began to call upon" is, however, of 
more doubtful import, and its interpretation pertains 
not so much to the theology of the antedeluvians as 
to their morals and worship. Some exegctes have 
supposed it to mean that men at this time began to 
worship images as the representatives of the Divine 
Being whom they nevertheless recognized as Jehovah. 
This interpretation derives the word rendered in our 
version "to call upon" from a root which signifies to 
profane or dishonor. Thus the Targum, followed by 
some celebrated Jewish interpreters. The Septuagint 
reads, ' 'Then he [Seth] hoped in Jehovah. " The He- 
brew verb will also permit us to read, Then Seth, on 
the occasion of the birth of Enos, called upon the name 
of Jehovah. But these views aside, "the language un- 
doubtedly refers to a more general honoring of the 
name of Jehovah among the pious Sethites," a more 
formal Divine worship having been instituted at the 
time. 

4. Gen. v, 21-24 furnishes us another glimpse of 
primeval life. Enoch, who was born six hundred and 
twenty two years after Adam, walked with God (Elo- 



TUB PRE MOSAK' PERIOD. 



him), and was not, for Grod (Elohim) took him. The 
use here of the name "Eiohim" can be accounted for 
on other ground than that of a mere persona] prefer- 
ence of the supposed "Elohistic writer" of this passage. 
The point in the statement is, not that Enoch was not 
Jehovahless^ but that he was not , godless; he not only 
recognized the Divine Being in his covenant or re- 
demptive relation to man, but he also and especially 
lived a godly life in close practical communion with 
him. He was a man of exceptional and conspicuous 
piety. The statement implies that it had already 
ceased to be the rule for men c, to walk with God," as 
Enoch did. Indeed, at the time of his translation, 
sixty nine years before Noah's birth, the dividing line 
was already passed, and the culminating point of antc- 
deluvian wickedness was already being rapidly reached. 
The Sethites, who had hitherto been "the sons of 
Grod," were already identifying themselves by mar- 
riage with ungodly families. Enoch protested (elude 
14), and prematurely disappeared from among men, 
for Grod took him. 

We can not, however, infer from the translation of 
Enoch that his contemporaries, as a rule, believed in 
the immortality of the soul, though they probably did 
to the same extent, and for the same reason, that all 
men do. But the recorded fact does imply an avowed 
belief in that doctrine on the part of the writer of the 
passage, but on the part of the contemporaries of 
Enoch only on the supposition that the information in 
regard to the translation reached the writer by tradi- 
tion and not solely by direct revelation. 

5. Gen, v, '2 s , •_".•. Sixty-nine years after the trans 
lation of Enoch Noah was born, Lantech his father. 



86 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

therefore, being contemporary with Enoch one hun- 
dred and thirteen years. We know not to what ex- 
tent Lamech, the grandson, had yielded to the 
good influence of pious Enoch the grandfather. But 
we know that the times had grown from bad to worse. 
Lamech's words, indeed, at the birth of his son indi- 
cate that God was still known, and known also by the 
more significant equivalent of Jehovah, though thus 
recognized perhaps only by a few Sethites. "This 
same [Noah, the new-born son] shall comfort us con- 
cerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the 
ground which Jehovah hath cursed." Lamech breathes 
a hope; perhaps in it there does not lurk a complaint 
against Jehovah on account of the hardship which he 
had imposed. But rather, "at so great an age," as 
Delitzsch says, "did these pious forefathers, who had 
renounced the self-created worldly lusts, confess their 
experience of the burden and painfulness, in all its 
gravity and in all its extent; and it is easily explained 
how it is that the history of the Sethites closes with 
language of such a different sound from that of the 
Cainites. [Gen. iv, 23, 24]. Lamech the Cainite is 
full of an evil drunken confidence. Lamech the Seth- 
ite, on the contrary, is filled with the most extreme de- 
jection in respect to the present, and has no other joy 
than in the promise of the future." The name Noah 
means Rest, and "the confident hope of the wearied is 
ever some bringer of rest;" though it is noticeable that 
even Lamech says nothing of the moral or spiritual, 
but limits his hope exclusively to the restitution of the 
physical world: and how even this was in his view, to 
be achieved through Noah we can only conjecture. 
And yet we can scarcely so belittle the record as to 



THE PRE MOSAIC PERIOD. 



suppose that Lamech merely meant thai in due time 
the labor of his new-born son should bo substituted for 

his own. and thai thereby hi should find rest. 

6. Gen. vi, 1 5. Bui in any event, Noah on ac- 
count of his piety found favor with God in the midst 
of a world from which good had well nigh departed, 
and thereby became a more conspicuous factor in the 
restitution of the world than Lamech, in the utterance 
of his unconscious prophecy, had anticipated. These 
opening verses of Ch. vi very probably cover a long 
period of time prior to the great Hood. The distinc- 
tion between the Sethites and ('ainito was lonff since 
obliterated for the most part. "The sons of God" 
and "the daughters of men," and the daughters of 
God and the sons of men, were thoroughly amalgam- 
ated by intermarriages. There were giants in wick- 
edness, in those days; Nephilim, fallen or degenerate 
ones, who became mighty men of renown: and thei 
were not of recent growth, but were of old, having in- 
creased in numbers for centuries before the Hood. 
And the invention by Lamech the Canute of tools and 

implements of metal must have given a fresh im- 
petus to the exercise of their daring and self-seeking 
prowess. 

"And .Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man 

was great in the earth, and that every imagination of 

the thoughts of hi- heart was only evil continu- 
ally:*' which statement implies, not only that the evil 
Was deep seated in the heart and violent in its outward 
expression, but that it was also universal. While 
Noah was perhaps not the only one who had the 
knowledge of the true God, he was practically the 
only one who persevered in his allegiance to him. 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



The light of the Church had become only a smoking 
wick. "The salt had lost its savor," and it was 
henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out. And 
so God destroyed the whole human race from off the 
face of the earth, with the exception of Noah and his 
family. 

§ 2. The Patriarchal Theology and Worship. 

Our study here includes the period of time. from the 
deluge to Moses. The subject may be studied first as 
it presents itself outside of the sphere of revelation; 
second, as it presents itself within that sphere. 

1. Outside the Sphere of Revelation. 

1. The doctrine of God. The doctrine that God is 
one, and the only one, was lost and found again. All 
the pre-Mosaic peoples, including even those of the 
line of Shem, seem to have become polytheists at a 
very early period, perhaps even before the death of 
Noah. The impress of polytheism is stamped indeli- 
bly even on the Hebrew language. It was, in its ear- 
liest rudiments, a heathen language long before it be- 
came the vehicle of a supernatural revelation. The 
word Elohim, the word designating the Being to whom 
revelation assigns the creation of the heaven and the 
earth, is a plural term; and as such it was used before 
revelation appropriated it to its own purpose, and in- 
jected into it a new meaning. 

The transition from the original monotheism of 
Noah must have been gradual, but it was nevertheless 
rapid and widespread. We learn even from Josh, 
xxiv, 2 that the immediate ancestors of Abraham were 
polytheists, though Abraham himself was probably, 



THE PRE MOSAIC PERIOD 



while yel in Chaldea, nol bo entirely committed to the 

worship of other gods as were his fathers. It is prob- 
able, also, thai by a few ethers who remained under 
the more immediate influence of Noah and Shem a lin- 
gering trace of monotheism was retained. But for the 

most part the primitive monotheism derived from the 
primeval revelation made to mankind, "was by degrees 

overlaid and hidden under a cloud of invented deities 
Originally attributes or manifestations of the one Su- 
preme Being, hut rapidly tending to detach them- 
selves, and to become [regarded as] separate personali- 
ties." (Rawlinson). The sun. moon, planets, and 
various phenomena of nature were deified, and an elab- 
orate system of idolatry prevailed in all Bible lands 
even prior to the migration of Abraham. 

2. Worship: The common form of worship among 
the Canaanites and Shemitic peoples in the farther 
east was thai of sacriticcs. The custom of offering 
human victims became prevalent among these races 
at an early period. If the sacrifice of a brute animal 
would be acceptable to the god, that of a human being, 
it was thought, would be propitiatory in a still higher 
degree. The more valuable the victim, the more 

agreeable would be the ascending savor— a conclusion 

easy to reach, but founded on a misconception of the 
divine Being, and of the true nature of a virtuous 
action. Sacrifices as expressions of gratitude were also 
offered. 

3. The future life: The pre-Mosaic peoples, particu 
larlythe Egyptians, held a very dear, definite and 

precise belief in the doctrines of a future exigence and 

a judgment of all men after death according to their 

works. In the midsl of these teachings Moses and t In 



90 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Hebrews grew up. It is not "probable, therefore, that 
the reticence of Moses on these subjects was intentional 
and premeditated. The features of the future life as 
believed in by the Egyptians were not such as an in- 
spired teacher could sanction. "An Egyptian, at the 
judgment, was supposed to appear before the assessors 
of Osiris, and to deny wholly that he had ever commit- 
ted any of the forty-two sins of the Egyptian sacred 
code. I have not blasphemed; I have not deceived, 
stolen, slain any one treacherously; I have not been 
cruel, idle, drunken," etc. The whole Egyptian be- 
lief on the subject of the dead was so inseparably bound 
up with the prevalent polytheism, worship of ancestors 
and sun-worship, that a prudent legislator, like Moses 
(to say nothing of his being under divine guidance), 
having to legislate for a people so wholly accustomed 
to material tendencies, and greatly inclined to idolatry, 
might well hesitate to lend any countenance to views 
in which the false and the true, the elevating and the 
degrading were inseparably intermixed, and might be 
wise in determining to leave the future life in the 
vagueness and the mystery from which the daring 
speculations of the Egyptian priests had withdrawn it, 
and concentrate men's attention on that present life 
which is their immediate concern, and the rightful 
conduct of which is the best preparation for whatever 
existence God designs them to lead in the life to 
come. 

The theological and religious state in the far east 
had long been no better than in Egypt. There is good 
reason for believing that the life of Abraham in 
Chaldea was nearly, if not quite, contemporary with a 
great religious revolution which one of the early kings 



TUB PUB MOSAIC rniiKUt M 



effected throughout all Babylonia. Till then the min- 
gled Accadians and Sumirs (inhabitants of Shinar) had 
followed a simple nature-worship, different in each 
town or district, and had not as yel grouped their local 
divinities into a graduated celestial hierarchy. Their 
religion, indeed, consisted chiefly in meagre rites; their 
ideas of the gods were vague and indefinite. 1 >ut two 
thousand years before the Christian era the mythology 

was already completed, and its deities definitely con- 
nected into a sy>tem which continued with little change 
down to the close of the kingdom. New divinities and 
a cruel worship displaced forever tin faith of earlier 
time's. In the midst of such religious intluences as 
these was Abraham, the faithful, brought up. 

1 1 . Within the Sphere of Revelation. 

1. (a). With Noah God resumes the development 
of his purpose of salvation by the seed of the woman. 
However meagre may have been his knowledge of God 
and of his purpose of salvation, and of divine things in 
general, it was sufficiently definite to enable him to 
become at once the Starting point of this new develop- 
ment. He was the recipient of direct revelation from 
God, and, so far as we know, he was the only one who 
was, until the time of Abraham. But Noah lived three 
hundred and fifty years after the flood, and during this 
interval may have been the recipient of frequent, 
though unrecorded revelations. Hence the knowledge 
of the true God, and of his purpose in regard to the 
human race, might be preserved within the narrow cir- 
cle of Noah'- own personal influence and instruction. 
That this circle was necessarily a limited one must be 
admitted, though it by no means follows that Noah 



92 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

and his immediate posterity were destitute of the art of 
writing. 

The question as to how Noah could identify any 
given revelation of which he might be the recipient as 
4i revelation from the true God, can be answered only 
by saying it was a matter of faith, or religious convic- 
tion. The fact, indeed, that faith must necessarily be 
the subjective condition of a supernatural revelation 
would limit this revelation to a select few, whose de- 
gree of religious aptitude rendered them open to its re- 
ception; and it would also tend to weaken any tradition 
of such revelation the farther this tradition might pro- 
ceed from its original source. All men have never 
possessed in an equal degree an acute and sensitive re- 
ligious instinct; and it is probable that Noah himself 
was more susceptible of supernatural revelations at 
some periods of his life than he was at others. His 
faith, like that of other good men, might not be uni- 
formly of the same strength and vividness, nor the 
religious sentiment in him uniformly lively. Such 
considerations as these may serve to explain, in part, 
at least, the rapid and general growth of heathenism 
during the first two or three centuries after the flood; 
though it is not probable that their knowledge ever 
ceased to be in advance of their morality. 

(b.) The development of the divine purpose of salva- 
tion, which began anew with Noah, had its starting 
point on the human side in the sacrifices which Noah 
offered shortly after his exit from the ark; these being 
an outward confession both of his sinfulness and of his 
belief that God would fulfill his purpose. We are not 
required to suppose, however, that he thoroughly un- 
derstood the nature and extent of this promised re- 



THE PRE MOSAIC PERIOD. 93 

demption, or the manner in winch it would be wrought 
out. 

On the part of God the starting point Is the accept 
once by him of the offered sacrifice of Noah, and the 
promise, "I will not again curse the ground," etc., 
Gen. viii. 21,22. The result of the sacrifice and its 
acceptance is, God enters into a new covenant, or 
rather, resumes his former covenant with the race, in 
virtue of which he again bestows on man at least a 
partial dominion over nature, and the blessing of per- 
petuating bis species, and "gives him a preliminary law 
to be their first elementary school-master": ''Whosoever 
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed" 
— in which there may be an allusion to the lawless 
violence and irreverent disregard of human life which 
were so rife in the days before the Hood. The rain-bow 
is made to serve as the permanent and ever-visible wit- 
ness of this solemn transaction. 

On account, however, of the rapid encroachments of 
heathenism it is probable that this whole transaction 
became in the course of a few generations a greatly 
distorted tradition; so that its greatest value is secured 
by the fact that it was afterwards made a matter of 
inspired record. The incident related m Gen. ix, 
21-23 is a matter of ethics, m regard to which it is 
probable that Noah's practice was on a level with his 
knowledge. His conduct may not have been wrong, 
judged by the only standard of morality to which he 
had as yet attained. His heart was doubtless more 
nearly right than his life. 

2. (//). With the call of Abraham began a new era 
in the Divine process of revelation and redemption. It 
is necessary that there should be an historical basis to 



94 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the work of salvation, for otherwise the race could 
be neither instructed nor saved. To this end, there- 
fore, an individual was chosen who could become, 
after Noah, the second starting point. Mankind gen- 
erally were already too far enveloped m the falling fog 
of heathenism for it to be possible to save the race in 
any other way than by a method of historical particu- 
larism. To counteract the prevailing wickedness, to 
preserve for himself a people to whom his word and 
ordinances might be committed, and among whom his 
worship might be perpetuated, God selected Abraham 
rather than one of his contemporaries doubtless be- 
cause he had not yielded so far to the encroachments 
of heathenism; perhaps also because of his more sensi- 
tive religious nature and livelier faith in the God of 
Noah; perhaps also because there was that in him gen- 
erally, as respected both his character and circum- 
stances, which rendered him more open to the call as 
well as more submissive to the discipline which it im- 
plied; or, in short, because he was m all respects the 
most available man for the purpose which God had in 
view. 

The call was a subjective one, of course, being com. 
mumcated to Abraham through the medium, not of 
his external, but of his inward and spiritual faculties. 
He rightly regarded the call as from the God whom he 
worshipped, because he could account for it in no 
other way, and his ready obedience to it was due to 
his faith and other elements of his religious nature. It 
is worthy of notice, however, that it is the writer of 
Genesis who simply informs us that the call was the 
call of God, but he does not say that Abraham at this 
stage of his spiritual growth was certain in his own 



THE PRE MOSAIC PERIOD. M 



mind thai it was Buch. Hence, so far as the Genesis 
record goes, we are at Liberty to believe that Abra- 
ham, at this period of his advancement, was merely 

acting under what may have seemed to him to be the 
pressure of circumstances, or In view of what he Bup- 

ed to be for the best, not being by any means cer- 
tain in his own mind that God was behind t he voice 
calling him to the fulfillment of a great destiny. Hut 

great souls may have great forecast ingS, and those of 
Abraham became more and more vivid, and were more 
and more distinctly recognized by him as divine. In 
after years he could look back over his past and iden- 
tify the hand which had led him as the hand of God, 
and the early whisperings which he had as the voice of 
God, whih he may by no means have clearly per- 
ceived them to he SO when he himself was hack in that 

past. In this respect his experience finds its parallel 

in the life of many a Christian, lie was one of the 
numerous worthies who walk by faith and not in the 
bright light of conscious knowledge. 

{!>). But whatever might he the details of the fut- 
ure of himself and his posterity, which was perhaps as 
yet a vague dream to him, Abraham knew that his 
mis-ion could not be fulfilled in his own country and 
among his kindred; because first, it would be more 
difficult for him to avoid idolatry living among his old 
associates than it would be among strangers. It 1- 
probable also that Church and State in Chaldea were 
united m his day, and that the idolatrous worship of 
more than one god was required and enforced by the 
sovereign. Second, had he retained his connection 
with his country and kindred, he would have been no 
more than one link in the chain, — no more in history 



96 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

than Nahor, or Terah, or Eber. He would have been 
absorbed by his surroundings, and could not have be- 
come the father of a u peculiar people." If such con- 
siderations as these were in the mind of Abraham 
strengthening his conviction that it would be best for 
him to remove to a land of strangers and of greater 
religious liberty, where he could worship the Divine 
Being according to the dictates of his own conscience, 
it only argues that there was in him a remarkable nat- 
ural basis for the supernatural revelations of which he 
was to be the recipient. And such natural basis was 
necessary, for not every man could have become an 
Abraham. 

(c). But the call implied a promise; for without the 
latter, the former would have been meaningless, and 
hence to Abraham the same as no call. There can be 
no call, unless it be to the realization of something, 
and this something to be realized is the promise. 
Hence the promise, which in the verbal statement fol- 
lows the call, is m reality the chief element of the call. 
The other elements were the desire which was, provi- 
dentially or otherwise, awakened to realize the promise 
or vision of the future which was vouchsafed, and the 
accompanying conviction that he ought to realize it. 
"I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless 
thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a 
blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and 
curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all the 
families of the earth be blessed." — Gren. xii. 2-3. 
Viewed from the standpoint of the writer who after- 
ward recorded it, this promise meant one thing; viewed 
from the standpoint of Abraham himself, it may have 
meant quite a different, though not a contradictory 



THE PRE MOSAIC PERIOD. 71 

thing. Before we can know just how it appeared to 
him, we must know more of hi* religious and theologi 
cal status. Perhaps it was, at first, to him a div inely 
produced, but as yet only a vague presentiment, g row 

i 1 1 «_T daily into a stronger conviction, until at last lie 
could say with confidence that the whispering within 
him was truly the voice of God. "By faith Abraham, 
when he was called to go out into a place which la; 
should afterward receive for an inheritance, obeyed; 
and he went out, not knowing whither he went." — 
Hel). xi. 3. The only thing that was clear to him was 
his sense of duty. The only media through which the 
divine voice could reach him were his conscience and his 
faith — even his conscience, however, being in a measure 
dependent upon his faith. Whatever visible theophany, 
or other form of miracle, there may have been from 
time to time, even it could appeal only to his faith; 
for unless he had believed it to be a miracle, it could 
not have been such to him. But faith cannot leap at 
one bound to its highest strength and purity. There 

must be a BUb-StratUm of experience and other forms 
of instruction and discipline to serve as the basis of 
each new requirement and endeavor. The met that 
the writer of Genesis records the promise several suc- 
cessive times implies, not that Abraham's original con- 
viction as to his mission was waning, but that it was 
continually present in his mind, and that every once 
and a while an incident occurred to strengthen it. It 
is a Btoryof growth, related according to the order of 
nature. Had his conviction or premonition of his fu- 
ture ever utterly disappeared from his mind, the fact 
would have been equivalent to a renunciation of his 
mission. 



98 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

(d). But neither Abraham's theology nor his relig- 
ion was at first perfect; nor is it likely that either be- 
came so during his life. Of the latter his faith was the 
least imperfect element. He believed in God, and he 
believed more and more strongly that He had called 
him to be the initial factor in the accomplishment of a 
great mission*. But this does not imply that either 
his knowledge of God, or of all that constitutes a sys- 
tem of religion, was perfect. Had his knowledge of 
either been perfect, he could not have felt it to be his 
duty to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering, because he 
could not have felt himself divinely called to do so. It 
was a Divine call, but it had to be based, in the first 
place, on Abraham's partial ignorance of the true 
character of the Divine Being and of the relation in 
which this Being and himself stood to each other; and, 
in the second place, on Abraham's familiarity with 
human sacrifices as practiced by the people among 
whom he then lived, as well as by those among whom 
he had lived while in Chaldea.f We do not know 

*Dean Milman thus summarizes the Abrahamic conception of 
God: I. His unity and almightiness. He is the Lord of heaven 
and earth (Gen. xiv, 19). He disposes of future events. One of 
his [Abrahamic] names implies almightiness [El-Shaddai]. II. 
His immateriality. His communication with Abram is by a 
voice [whether heard with the outward ear or in the inner man 
or in vision]. His apparition (Gen. xiv, 8 18), is without form. 
The symbol is that which is least material — the fire or the smoke 
cloud. III. His active Personality. He is more than a power 
or force, or law; he is a Being with a will, with moral attributes, 
revealing himself more or less distinctly, and holding communi- 
cation, not only as an overruling influence on material things, 
but with the inward consciousness of man. — History of the Jews. 

•f-As to the question, How could God command Abraham to 
kill Isaac? two considerations, says Dr. Alexander McLaren, 
deserve attention. First, the final issue, namely : Isaac's deliv 



THE PRE .\{'>SMC PERIOD. 99 



how long the question whether he should offer [saac 
was on his mind; but many case the greatest obstacle 
in the way of ready obediqpce was his natural affec- 
tion. He doubtless shared, however, the common be- 
lief of his contemporaries, that the greater the degree of 
self denial involved, the greater the degree of Divine 
favor which he would secure. It is on this imperfect 
religious and theological status that the Divine call to 
sacrifice Isaac is based; for, what I believe that God 
requires me to do depends very largely on what sort 
of a Being I believe God to be; as much on this, 
perhaps, as on my previously formed idea of my 
right to do this <>r that. — deprive my child of its life, 
for instance. 

Whatever may at first have been Abraham's own 

view on the subject, it is to be observed in this in- 
stance, that the call i> made not because the Divine 
Being really desired human sacrifices, but for the very 
reason, in part, that he did not approve of them. ( Jon- 

erance was an integral part of the Divine purpose from the be 
ginning of the trial; so that the question really is, Was it ac 
conlant with the Divine character to require readiness to saeri 
See even a son at his command? Second, that in Abraham's 
time a father's right oyer a child's life was unquestioned, and 
that therefore this command, though it laceratt »1 Abraham's 
heart, did not wound his conscience as it would do were it heard 
to-day. It is impossible to conceive of a Divine injunction such 
as this being addressed to us. We have learned the inalienable 
sacredm 98 of every life, and the awful prerogative and burden 
of individuality. God 8 command cannot enforce sin. But it 
was not wrong in Abraham's eyes for a father to slay his son; 
and God mighl >hape his message to the form of the existing 
morality without derogation to his character, especially when 
the result of the message would be, among other things, to teach 
his abhorrence of human sacrifices, and so to lift the existing 
morality to a higher level. 



100 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

sidering Abraham's familiarity with such sacrifices, 
which he had, perhaps, been accustomed "to regard as 
a matter of course, the only way whereby he might be 
set right was to cause him to think about it as a per. 
sonal matter. The only way in which God could speak 
to him was through the medium of his thoughts and 
surroundings; and the very moment Abraham reached 
the definite conclusion that Isaac ought to be sacrificed, 
and that he actually would sacrifice him, that very 
moment it was to him a divine call, and that very mo- 
ment the deed was virtually done. Not only was it in 
his estimation a divine call, but it was so in reality, for 
that was the very conclusion to which God desired to 
lead him, though it was not the thing which he desired 
him actually to do. To Abraham the virtual sacrifice 
of his son was an immense triumph of his faith, while 
at the same time he reached the definite conviction that 
literal human sacrifices were not the thing which God 
desired. His faith had leaped forward and upward, 
and henceforth he was far in advance of his former 
theological and religious status. His knowledge of 
God and of the manner in which he should be wor- 
shipped was such as to render it unnecessary for him 
ever again to be called on to make a personal matter 
of the question of human sacrifices. 

(e). But the question: What degree of significance 
did bloody sacrifices of any sort have in the estimation 
of Abraham himself ? is not easily answered. Abra- 
ham's contemporaries were familiar with these sacri- 
fices, as he himself was, and it is not probable that he 
attached a larger significance to them than they did. 
But it was a different quality of significance, doubtless, 
due to his livelier faith, his more sensitive religious 



THE PRE MOSAIC VEliloD 101 



nature, his purer and more advanced ideas in regard to 

the Divine Being, and to the above-mentioned premoni- 
tions which he had all along in regard to the mission 
and destiny of his people. To him who regarded God, 

not as a tutelary Deity, one among many, hut as the 
Most High, the JU81 Judge of the whole earth, and 

therefore the Only One, and holy, sacrifices were some- 

what different from, and better than, what they could 

otherwise have been. They may not have been types 
in the usual sense of that term, hut they surely were 
memorials to him of God's purpose of redemption, and 
a- such he offered them, and thereby nave proof of his 
faith in that purpose. The promise made in Eden still 
whispered m his bosom, and he looked forward and 
saw the day of Christ, not in its details and fullness, 
perhaps, hut as being in some way the fulfillment and 
consummation of a saving purpose and plan. 

{f). But Abraham grew in religious experience, 
and by the Divine Spirit and Providence became 
more and more confirmed in his convictions as 
to the part he and his posterity should have in 
the working out of the Divine purpose; that which 
in his own heart had been a mere conviction more 
or less strong, but on the part of God was a real 
promise, assumed the form*of a solemn covenant. 
This covenant amounts on the side of Abraham to a 
full committal of himself and at least one branch of 
his posterity to the mission which he feels to he set 
before them, and concerning which there could no 
longer he any doubt. Inasmuch as the matter of the 
mission is now settled once for all, it i- plain that 
there should be to the human party to it a perpetual 
and distinctive reminder of it; and which should at 



102 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



the same time also serve as a perpetual bond of union 
and token that God would contribute his part to the 
fulfillment of the covenant. But the question why 
circumcision should have been chosen as such me- 
morial cannot, perhaps, be answered satisfactorily to 
all. Perhaps a distinctive sign was needed. Circum- 
cision does not seem to have been practiced by the 
people among whom Abraham then lived, and it is 
by no means certain that it was practiced by any 
contemporary nation Or, if it be supposed that 
Abraham was familiar with the rite, as the language 
of Gen. xvii, 1 may seem to some to imply, perhaps 
such a token was needed as the people might observe 
or might not observe, thereby perpetually reminding 
them that the fulfillment in themselves of the cove- 
nant depended in part on themselves. In this case 
a previously known practice might well serve as a 
token, just as a previously existing natural phenom- 
enon, the rainbow, served as the sign of the covenant 
with Noah. In that instance it was a natural phenome- 
non wholly beyond human control, for the fulfillment 
of the covenant as then made does not depend on the 
faithfulness of any particular line or family. But here 
its fulfillment in the Abrahamic family is made to de- 
pend on the voluntary faithfulness of that family. Hence 
the sign which they might observe or neglect. 

(g). God afterwards by his Spirit impressed the 
same matters on the hearts of Isaac and Jacob, who 
had doubtless also received faithful instruction from 
Abraham. These with greater or less degree of 
faithfulness performed their various duties, teaching 
the worship of the true God to their domestics, and 
communicating it in turn to their posterity. 



the pre mosa/c in-: nut n. km 



(//). En regard to the polygamy of these patriarchs, 

that is a matter of ethics. Bu1 it may be observed 
here, that as they were not .suddenly inducted to the 
highest knowledge of Grod, nor indeed could be, so 
they were not and could not be suddenly inducted to 
the practice of the highest morality. Men's percep- 
tions of right and wrong are known to depend trery 
largely on the state of society in which they live. The 
moral law itself is immutable, hut one's idea of what 
is moral or immoral grows with his growth. And 
while the Bible nowhere approves, but everywhere 
tacitly or expressly disapproves of polygamy, it is yet 
possible to conceive of circumstances under which it 
would he much less injurious everyway than would he 
with us. Such extenuating circumstances may have 
existed to a certain extent with the patriarchs. Still, 
it was an evil, and the Hebrews were ultimately led to 
its abandonment. 



DIVISION II. 
The Mosaic Period. 



Definition. 

In this division we study the institutions and doctrines of the 
Mosaic times; or rather, the religion of Israel, as exhibited in 
their history, institutions and beliefs. This is commonly called 
Mosaism, Moses being by far the most conspicuous and influen- 
tial leader and teacher of this period. Chronologically, it em- 
braces only the period of time from the exodus of Israel from 
Egypt to the entrance into Canaan, for during this period the 
system was perfected. The other three Pentateuchal ages, viz: 
the antedeluvian, the Noachic and the patriarchal, are to be re 
garded as introductory to this, and not as a part of it. The 
theological and religious contents of these ages are in no sense a 
part of Mosaism, only in as far as they furnish theological and 
religious contributions thereto. To determine, therefore, the 
doctrinal and religious ground-work or basis of Mosaism; or, in 
other words, to distinguish that which Mosaism had to begin 
with, is the first object of our present study. 



Chapter I. 



THE HISTORICAL AND DOCTRINAL BASIS OF THIS PERIOD. 

§1. Historical Basis. 

The historical facts which Mosaism presupposes, and 
upon which it is reared, find their starting point in the 
call of Abraham; and this in turn is based on the divine 
purpose, ever present in the divine mind, of redeeming' 

(104) 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 10*) 



the nice from sin and sin's effects. The covenant with 

Abraham is only a new phase of the covenant made 

with Noah, and this again is only a new phase of the 

covenant with Adam ((Jen. iii. 15). The nature and 

general significance of the case of Abraham, considered 

from Abraham's own point of view, have already been 

briefly dwelt upon. The promise involved in the call 

(Gen. xii. 2,3) was only the resumption, continuation, 

and furtherunfoldin^: of the blessing given to his an- 

o no 

cestor, Shem (Gen. ix. 26, 27), with which it is likely 
that Abraham was acquainted. The servitude to which 
Caanan had been condemned reappears in the words: 
u Unto thy seed will I give this land;' 1 and, together 
with the prophecy concerning Shem (that Elohim 
should dwell in his tents), the curse becomes a blessing 

given to Abraham, while the words: "In thee shall all 
families of the earth be blessed," is only another way 
of including not only the descendants of Japheth 
within the scope of the promise, but also all other 
nations, even the Ilamitic. which do not refuse the 
blessing offered through the medium of Abraham's 
race. The words of this promise, even strictly con- 
strued, admit of application to the personal Messiah, 
the great Redeemer of the race; but it is not necessary 
here to construe them as having, in the mind of Abra- 
ham and his immediate descendants, such personal ref 
erence. It is quite conceivable, it is true, that Abraham 
in respect to his ideas was far in advance of his age; but 
it must also be regarded as true that the highest mean- 
ing put upon the covenant words, for some centuries 

yet, was that a great good was meant, a blessing in- 
volving salvation, though the precise way in which it 
should be wrought out was not vet fully understood 



106 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



by the mass of the covenant people, if indeed it was- 
hy the few who received special revelations. It is not 
unlikely that the promise was so far misunderstood by 
many as to cause them to regard Abraham himself as 
the medium of the salvation, so that to be a descend- 
ant of him through Isaac and Jacob was itself a suffi- 
cient pledge of the blessing; while, therefore, the sal- 
vation in any given case may have been a matter of 
the future, the Saviour was one, not to be expected, 
but rather retrospected, the only thing needful to be 
sure about being the matter of personal pedigree. It 
was always known to the Divine mind, of course, as 
we ourselves now know that u the seed of the woman," 
and "seed of Abraham" was in the highest sense the 
Christ the Son of God; but doubtless the most that 
was known about it in the early ages of the Old Testa- 
ment Church was that the restoration should be 
effected in some way thrugh the medium of the same 
human nature that had been the medium of the rum. 
Abraham had several children by his wives Keturah 
and Hager; but not in these was the promise to find 
its fulfillment; not out of the posterity of these wasrthe 
"peculiar nation" to be organized which should be the 
medium of the accomplishment of the Divine purpose. 
In Isaac, not merely because he was the child of his 
old age, and therefore his most beloved, not merely* 
because he was the son of Sarah, but because he was 
the child of his father's faith and of miracle, should 
his seed be called. The fact that Isaac was the child of 
miracle was important as a pledge to Abraham, for 
while it was due in part to his faith, it yet in turn 
greatly increased his faith, but it was even of more 
importance to the after ages of the chosen race as 



THE M08A1C PERIOD 10? 



being to thom a perpetual Divine testimonial, as well 
as a proof thai faith is over necessary on the part of 
those who would possess the Divine favor. Of Isaac's 
two Bons, Esau is excluded, or rather excluded him 
self, and Jacob becomes the one from whom the na- 
tion should proceed, which Bhould be the medium of 
unfolding and accomplishing the redemptive purpose. 
The twelve tribes, as they were afterwards called, bord 
the name- of Jacob's twelve sons, none of whom either 
socially or politically strayed beyond the limits of the 
covenant as did Esau; though this does not imply on 
their part either the practice of a purer morality orthe 
possession of a livelier faith than characterized Esau. 
The circumstance that held the twelve 4 sons together 
was the tram of providential events which led in the 
first place to the return from Padan-Aram, .Tin I in the 
second place, to the settlement of the whole family in 
Egypt. In all these circumstances they themselves 
were factors, though without any reference whatever 

to the Divine purpose, to the fulfillment of which they 
were unconsciously contributing. Doubtless, how- 
ever, the patriarch Jacob already anticipated the or- 
ganization of his posterity into a nation and their re- 
turn to Canaan, for he provides on his deathbed for 
the transportation of his body thither; and he had 

doubtless, as the old prophecy of Gen. xv, Lo, 1<*>, 
proceeded towards it- fulfillment, implanted in his 
sons more and more of the same faith. The voluntary 
settlement in Egypt became a period of bondage which 
is passed over in the biblical account for the most part 
in silence. But meanwhile the family grows not only 
in numbers, but also in it> distinctness a- a people. 
During the closing year- of tin 1 period their condition 



108 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

becomes more and more degraded and servitude more 
and more severe; the providential design of this is two- 
fold. First, the unification of the people. Nothing 
so binds together as a common suffering. Second^ to 
prepare them for the exodus from Egypt and the re- 
turn to Canaan, which comes at last, Moses, one of 
their own number, being the agent through whom it is 
effected. The next step is the formal organization of 
the people into a nation, which takes place at Sinai. 

§2. Historical Basis Continued: Moses. 

Moses is the character who first appears as the or- 
ganizer, the law-giver, and also the representative of 
the Israelitish nation. ' 'To the outer heathen world 
the earlier period of the Hebrew race, with the single 
exception of Abraham, was an entire blank. Their 
origin in the far East, their first settlement in Canaan, 
the name of their first father, whether Jacob or Israel, 
these were all but unknown to the Greeks and Romans. 
It is the Exodus that reveals the Israelite to the eyes 
of Europe. Egypt was the only land which the Gen- 
tile inquiries recognized as the birth-place of the Jews. " 
Here Moses was born about one hundred and thirty 
years after the first settlement of the Hebrews in 
Egypt, and about sixty-five years after the death of 
Joseph. He was the son of Amram and Jocebed, of 
the tribe of Levi. The circumstances of his birth and 
early infancy are given in Ex. ii. He was reared as 
the adopted son of the King's daughter, and thus be- 
came "learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians;" and 
was thus, on the human side, at least, only the better 
prepared for the great mission that lay before him. 
He became, also, mighty l 'in deed" as well as in word. 



rut: mosaic r /■;/;/<)/) m<> 



After mentioning the circumstances of bis birth, the 
writer passes over in Bilence the first forty years of 
Life. During these years ho has been regarded as an 
Egyptian rather than a Hebrew. According to Jewish 
and Egyptian tradition, he was educated al Heliopolis, 
and grew up there as a priest, under his Egyptian 
name of Osarsiphor Tisethen. He learned arithmetic, 
geometry, music, medicine, astronomy and grammar. 
He is also said to have invented boats and engines for 
building, ''instruments of war and hydraulics, hiero- 
glyphics, and division of lands. 11 lie taught Orpheus, 

and was hence called by the Greeks "Museus, 11 and 

by the Egyptians "Hermes*". He was sent on an ex- 
pedition against the Ethiopians, whom he conquered, 
getting rid of the serpents of the country to be trav- 
ersed l>v letting loose baskets full of ibises, which de- 

voured them. The city of Ilennopolis was believed to 
have been founded to commemorate his victory. He 
re-named the conquered capital "Meroc, 11 from the 
name of his adopted mother, whom he is said to have 

buried there. He married the daughter of the Ethio- 
pian king, and returned with her in triumph to Egypt. 
But whatevei may have been the honors which he 
achieved, and those which may have belonged to him 
by right, not merely as tin 1 protege, hut as the adopted 
Mm of the king's daughter, he voluntarily renounced 
them all, "choosing rather to Buffer affliction with the 
people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of mu for a 
season; esteeming the. reproach of Christ greater riches 
than the treasures of Egypt;" which of itself argues 
that he was a truly Strong character, and had a pro- 

*Artapanus in Eusebius; quoted by Stanley, Jewish Church, 
Sec v 



110 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



found conception of the mission of his people, and a 
profound insight into their future. This conception 
and insight were the expansion by the Holy Spirit, 
doubtless, of seeds implanted in his breast by his 
mother-nurse; though the words quoted from the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, viz. : ' 'esteeming the reproach of 
Christ," are not necessarily to be so construed as to 
teach that Moses at this time received a revelation con- 
cerning the personal Messiah. He believed thoroughly 
the theocratic promises made to his fathers, which was 
equivalent to believing in a personal Christ of the New 
Testament, though Moses at the time may not have 
known this. It is possible to accept a proposition as 
true, even to the extent of staking one's life upon its 
truth, and yet not be aware of all the truth as involved 
in the proposition. 

Moses having reclaimed his Hebrew nationality, the 
circumstances leading to his exile in Midian, beyond 
the jurisdiction of the Egyptian authorities, are briefly 
related in Ex. ii, 11-15. The only inspiration that im- 
pelled Moses to slay the Egyptian was the inspiration 
of passionate impulse, though this passionate impulse 
and quickness of action were founded, not so much 
upon the Egyptian training he had received, as upon 
the fact that he committed himself to the cause of his 
people, and had resolved to make their future his own. 
But he w T as too fresh from court, and the people were 
not yet ready; and the only way of delivering them 
had not yet developed; and even Moses cannot antici- 
pate his own Divine call. So he has to flee the coun- 
try, and receive a schooling amid the solitudes of 
exile, which was no less important to him than that 
which he had received in the cloisters of HeRopolis and 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD ill 



in thr court circle and armies of Egypt. During his 
fort v years in Midian he became thoroughly acquainted 

with the country and the tribes and the language which 
they spoke, and Identified by marriage with a tribal 
prince, who could afterward lend valuable aid; and 
the opportunity, amid the silenl grandeur of the desert 
and the mountains, while keeping the flocks of Jethro, 
for meditation, reflecting upon the pasl of his people, 
and gathering up their traditions and the promises con- 
concrning them; easting, doubtless, many a longing 
look to their future. God and man can best commune 
with each other amid the unbroken solitudes. In this 
way Moses Is prepared for the revelation made to him 
by the Voice which -poke from the bush which burned 
but was not consumed. His mind had previously dwelt 
much on the subject, otherwise no revelation could 
have been made to him. any more than it could have 
been made to Jethro or one of the Amalekites. Super- 
natural revelation implies a natural basis, according to 
the usual Divine mode of working. But Moses at first 
shrinks. It is always easier to contemplate a great 

•/ l t 

mi— ion at a distance than it is once for all to commit 
one's self to it. But meanwhile corresponding prepar- 
ation- for the yet unhoped-for exodus have been quietly 
making in Egypt. The old king, from whom Moses 

Uad tied, i> dead. The Oppression of the Hebrews has 

not become less rigidly severe.. Some degree of hope 

of better things had begun to be awakened in the hearts 
of the people by Aaron, the tribe of Levi and the 
family of Aiiiram. in particular, being truer both to 
the past and to the future of the chosen people than 
any other of the tribes. 

Nor would Moses himself, on his vet urn, be any 



112 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

longer known as an Egyptian, and regarded as one 
who was false to his nationality. The very fact that 
they now cried unto God (Ex. ri, 23) m the severity of 
their servitude, implies that they were now in the atti- 
tude to be saved u as one man," and that faith is begin- 
ning to be born in them. Affliction had ripened them 
for redemption, and they soon saw signs and heard 
words which they could not gainsay. 

Meanwhile Aaron had direct Divine intimation that 
his brother was in the vicinity of Horeb, and that he 
must meet him there. He found him at the designated 
place, and kissed him, according to Eastern custom. 
They had not seen each other for forty years, perhaps, 
but their minds had dwelt on the same theme. They 
talked the matter over (Ex. xii, 28) thoroughly and 
alone, amid the shadows of the mountains of God, 
and, returning to Egypt along the route which after- 
ward they should traverse under different circum- 
stances, they enter at once upon their arduous mission 
of delivering, organizing and leading the people from 
Egypt to the land of promise. And they succeeded. 

Note. — For the testimony of Josephus concerning Moses and 
the Egyptian traditions given by him, see Jos. against Apion, 
Bk. i, 26-33, and Jos. Antiq. Bks. ii and iii. Strabo's testimony 
is as follows: "Moses, an Egyptian priest who possessed a con- 
siderable tract of Lower Egypt, unable longer to bear what ex- 
isted there, departed thence to Syria, and with him went out 
many who honored the Divine Being. For Moses maintained 
and taught that the Egyptians were not right in likening the na- 
ture of God to beasts and cattle, nor yet the Africans, nor even 
the Greeks, in fashioning their gods in the form of men. He 
held that this only was God — that which incompasses all of us, 
earth and sea, that which we call Heaven, and the Order of the 
world, and the Nature of things. Of this, who that had any 
sense would venture to invent an image like anything which ex- 
ists among ourselves? Far better to abandon all statuary and 



THE TtOBAlC PERIOD. m 



sculpture, all setting apart of sacred precincts and shrines and 
to pay reverence without any image whatever. The course pre- 
scribed was, that those who have the gift of good divinations 
for themselves or for others, should compose themselves to sleep 
within the temple; and those who live temperately and justly 
may expect to receive some good gift from God, these always 
and none besides.— Strabo, xvii, 700. ' 

§3. Doctrinal Basis. • 
Mosaism also presupposes certain doctrines, in their 
rudiments, at least, if not in their fully developed 

forms. It is a mistake to suppose that the Israelites 
at the time of their exodus from Egypt were a rude 
race of people altogether destitute of even the begin- 
nings of culture. However long and severe their ser- 
vitude may have been, it is evident that their will had 
not been crushed, for abundant proof is not wanting 
that even under slight provocations they were quick 
to assert their opinions and preferences. It isnotsup- 
posable, even in the absence of other evidence to the 
contrary, that so spirited a people would fail to retain 
much of their ancestral religion, and also at the same 
time fail toabsorb much from their surroundings. The 
remembrance of the God of Abraham, [saac, and 
Jacob had doubtless to some extent faded from the 
minds of many of the people, and we learn unmistak- 
ably from the incident of the golden calf, Ex. xx.xii, 
mid from such passages as Lev. xvii. 7; xviii, 21* 
Ezek. xx. 6-9; xxiii, 8, 19, that the pure worship of 
•God which had obtained among the patriarchs, had 
been displaced by Idol-worship. But the traditions f 
another God. and another worship, and a promised 
future still lingered. Moses had these as a vantage 
ground to begin with, and on which to base his appeals 
and his instructions. The doctrinal statu, of the La 



114 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

raelites previous to and at the time of the exodus may 
be briefly exhibited as follows: 

1. The Israelitish doctrine of God at this period of 
their history was partly an inheritance, partly an ab- 
sorption from their surroundings, and partly as a mat- 
ter of Divine revelation communicated to them through 
Moses. But the Egyptian system of theology was 
never to any considerable extent adopted by the Is- 
raelites, however much their religious practices may 
have been influenced thereby. They were not only 
Semites, but also-' Hebrews; and these two facts they 
could not have forgotten had they been so disposed. 
The Semitic conception of the Divine Being antecedent 
to, and current among the Hebrews during the early 
Mosaic time, can not be adequately understood apart 
from a consideration of the names by which he was 
known. The most general of these designations were 
El, Eloah, Elohim, El Elyon, El Shaddai, and the 
later and exclusively Hebrew name, Jehovah. Of 
these names El is the oldest. It means the Mighty 
One, being allied to the verb ul which signifies to be 
strong. In the primitive Semitic conception of God 
power was the dominant factor. He was not chiefly 
^the self-existent One, nor the just, nor the merciful, 
but the One who had power and could wield it. The 
problem of existence and the ethical ideas of justice, 
mercy, etc., were not the subjects which engaged the 
chief thought of primeval man. His first material was # 
furnished through the medium of his physical senses. 
As applied to the true God within the sphere of reve- 
lation, the name El is never found alone, but always 
in connection with the definite article, or other ad- 
junct that restricts its meaning; as (e. g.) Gen. xiv, 



THE M08AIC PERIOD. n: ( 



,s - l9 > -"• 22, where it is limited by the adjective 
"most high," the corresponding phrase in the He- 
brew being El Elyon. The Rnglish reader is familiar 
With the word in such old proper names as Mehuja-el, 
Methusa-el, Beth-el, eta This word was in common 
use ai the time of the exodus, :m .l continued to be dur- 
ing the subsequent periods of Hebrew history. Bui 
in as much as even- nation had its own peculiar, or 
tutelary, gqd, the term was as applicable to one as to 
another, and hence when applied to him who was re- 
garded as the true God, the God above all gods, it had 
to be restricted in the manner above described. Hence 
to Isaac he reveals himself not merely as El, or Elo- 
him- -this latter term having the same genera] and 
indefinite application as the former; but he reveals him- 
self to Isaac as the El of Abraham, and to Jacob as 
the El of Abraham and baac, and subsequently as the 
El of thy fathers, the El which broughl thee up out 
of the land, of Egypt Had it not been for these spec 
ifications the people, not quite free from the taint of 
polytheism, mighl not have been certain as to which 
Kl it was who was revealing himself, while at the 
same time these quatifying phrases Berved to inject 
into their minds the idea of his abiding personal iden- 
tity and also of his faithfulness. 

God appeared unto Abraham and said. -I am Kl 
Shaddai," Almighty Kl (Gen. xvii, 1), Jacob said unto 
Joseph, "Kl Shaddai appeared unto me," (Gen. xlviii, 
3). "And Kl Shaddai give you mercy before the 
man,"(Gen.xliii, 14). These are the only instances 
in the book of Genesis in which this title is applied 
t<> the Divine Being; but it is used here as one well 
understood. We are informed indeed later on that he 



116 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as El Shad- 
dai, indicating that that term was in common use in 
their day. It so continued as is shown by its very fre- 
quent occurrence in all subsequent Hebrew literature. 
But to what conception of the Divine Being does it 
point ? It characterizes Him not merely as the Being 
who has might, but also as the One "revealing himself 
in his might" (Oehler). "It is no longer the powerful 
Divinity ruling the world in general that is El Shaddai, 
but the God who testifies of himself in special deeds of 
power." And these special deeds not being limited to 
the realm of material nature, but also being wrought 
in the sphere of the moral. El Shaddai was God re- 
garded as the Being who not only could rule nature, 
but who (to use the words of Delitzsch) "compels nat- 
ure to do what is contrary to itself; subdues it to bow 
and minister to grace." 

In the name u El Elyon," of Gen. xiv, 22, and sub- 
sequently, is also preserved the conception of God as 
the absolutely pre-eminent, and the connection in which 
this title appears in the first instance shows that not 
only was the absolute pre-eminence of God recognized 
by Abraham and Meichizedcc, but that he was publicly 
worshiped as such by means of ordinances conducted 
by a stated functionary; and this, in turn, implies that 
there must have been at least still a remnant of people 
left among whom a considerable knowledge of the true 
God was still preserved — which facts were doubtless 
known by some of the Israelites of the time of Moses. 
The reference made to Melchizedec a thousand years 
later, in the one hundred and tenth Psalm, 
and still a thousand years later, in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, authorizes us to believe that 



THE ItOSAlO psawo. 



II 



the priesthood of Melchizedec implied an acknowl 
edgemenl on his part, and hence on the pari of 

Uwwe for whom I fficiated; of the doctrine and no- 

cessity of an atonement. And thai the El Elyon 
CMost High God) of the passage was nol the name of 
■ ? ew beathen <*<%, and Melchizedec a new heathen 
priest, is evidenl from the facl thatChrisI wascalleda 
pnesl after his order. 

Nor is ii likely thai theterm "El Olam" (God Ever- 
lasting) of Gen. wri, 33, is the name of a merely local 
god, applied to the God whom Abraham worshiped 
l< is not to be so regarded in the numerous subsequent 
instances in which the word occurs. The word "Olam " 
however, does not necessarily mean "everlasting » m 
our usual sense of that word Asappliedtoapereon, 
it is one, the beginning or end of whose duration is 
uncertain or indefinite. The expression "El Olam " 
according to the Samaritan, Syriac and Arabic ve'r- 
nons of the passage, may also mean "God of the uni- 
verse.' Bui the meaning, "God of eternity," sug- 
gested by the Common and Revised English versions 
as well as the Septuagint, Vulgate and several Tar- 
gums, doubtless furnishes the righl sense, eternity be- 
ing preeminently thai the beginning and end of which 
;"''•""» b'dden. We cannol know with certainty 
however, the degree of emphasis which the patriarch 
V™"* "!:.;" ,h " '"'''» as descriptive of the Divine 

I "'" 1 -- lll ' : ""' tesofjustic, and mercy were also 

^cognized in the patriarchal and Mosaic times as be- 
longing to him, though they were not the ones which 
gave him Dame. 

Eloah, also translated "God," does not occur in the 
Pentateuch. It is allied in meaning to the name "EL" 



118 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

and probably designates God as the Being whose power 
is such as to inspire terror. Elohim is the most com- 
mon designation of the Divine Being, not only in Gen- 
esis, but in the whole Old Testament, and is also trans- 
lated "God," though it means the Mighty or Powerful 
One. It is the plural of Eloah. It is not found in 
any of the Semitic languages, except the Hebrew, 
though the term is often used in the Bible to designate 
the so-called gods of the heathen, as well as the true 
God.* 

That the word "Elohim," when applied to the true 
God, was used as a plural of excellence, as some sup- 
pose, can never be demonstrated; nor can it ever be 
proved that it hints even remotely at the Trinity. 
Both of these hypotheses are improbable conjectures. 
While the word is familiar to the Hebrew language, 
it is also true that it existed outside the sphere of reve- 
lation, as well as within that sphere. The date of the 
origin of the term is, of course, unknown, but it is not 

*The name by which the Deity is known throughout the 
patriarchal or introductory age of the Jewish church is "Elo- 
him," translated in the English version "God." In this name 
has been discovered a trace of the conciliatory, comprehensive 
mission of the first prophet of the true religion. Elohim is a 
plural noun, though followed by a verb in the singular. When 
Eloah (God) was first used in the plural, it could only have sig- 
nified, like any other plural, many Eloahs; and such a plural 
could only have been formed after the various names of God had 
become the names of independent deities; that is, during a poly- 
theistic stage. The transition from this into the monotheistic 
stage could be effected only in two ways either by denying alto- 
gether the existence of the Elohim, and changing them into 
devils— as was done in Persia — or by taking a higher view, look- 
ing upon them as so many names, invented with the honest 
purpose of expressing the various aspects of the Deity, though 
in time diverted from their original intention. This was the 



THE M08A1C PBBIOD. n«» 



probable thai it was coined to meet the demands of 
revelation. Within the sphere of Semitic heathenism, 
it was probably used as an ordinary plural, just as it 
was used In the sphere of revelation, when applied to 
the gods of the heathen. Semitic heathenism was 
polytheistic, and had use for juM Mich a term, to ex- 
press what was regarded as the prominent Divine ele- 
ment inhering in more than one God. 

When the word wasbroughl within the sphere of i he 
religion of Israel Its plural form was brought with it, and 
in this form it was applied to the one true (iod; hut it 
could scarcely have been applied to him as a suggestion 
either of majesty or trinity. So remote and metaphysical 
a hint of the transcendant excellence, or triune person- 
ality of God, would have been of little practical value 
to any one, except perhaps to those already informed 
of Sltch things by supernatural revelation. When the 
word became the vehicle of revelation, it was used in 
the plural form to designate the one true God, because 

view taken by Abraham. Whatever were the names of the Elo- 
him worshiped by the numerous clans of his race, Abraham saw 
that all the Elohim were meant for God, and thus Elohim, com- 
prehending by one name everything that ever was or ever could 
be called Divine, became the name by which the monotheistic 
age was rightly inaugurated: a plural conceived and construed 
a9 a singular. From this point of view the Semitic name of the 
Deity, which at first sounds not only ungrammatical, but irra 
tional, becomes clear and intelligible. It is at once the proof 
that Monotheism rose on the ruins of a polytheistic faith, and 
that it absorbed and acknowledged the better tendencies of that 
faith. In the true spirit of the later apostle to the Gentiles, 
Abraham, his first predecessor and model, declared the God 

whom they ignorantly worshiped to be the God thai made the 

world and all things therein— the Lord of heaven and earth, in 
whom we live and move and have our being. (Acts xvii, 23-28 ) 
—Stanley' 8 Jewish Church. 



120 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

there was no better generally understood name by 
which to call him. While Elohim may be regarded 
as the grammatical plural of Eloah. it really has no 
singular in fact. El, or Eloah, denotes not one god, 
but rather one among many gods in so far as it desig- 
nates an individual at all. The doctrine that there 
is only one God was lost and found again. In the 
early Mosaic time it was in process of being found. 
The new revelation had to coin new words or adopt 
old ones, as best it might, just as Christianity had to 
do in the case of the Greek language. 

In order that the recipients of the new revelations 
might eventually no longer doubt that there is only 
one God, expedients had to be resorted to. The use 
of no one term, whether of the singular or plural form, 
would settle the question. One of these expedients, 
we may suppose, was a syntactical one — the use of the 
singular verb, or of the definite article, with the plu- 
ral name Elohim; perhaps another was the invention, 
or at any rate the adoption, of a new, memorial name, 
by which the true God should afterwards be distin- 
guished; perhaps another was a course of experimental 
tests — Jehovah permitting himself, so to speak, to be 
brought into collision with the so-called gods of the 
heathen in order that the Hebrews might have sensible 
proof of his superiority, and finally of the nothingness 
of the other gods. It was necessary that they should 
become thoroughly monotheistic, for only thus could 
they be led to the true distinction between trinitarian- 
ism and tritheism. The Biblical revelation always in- 
sists on a rigid monotheism; and the very fact that it 
does this so strenuously even in its earliest stages 
seems to imply that monotheism was not the prevail 



THE Mas Air PERIOD. 191 



ing belief at that time. Doubtless such pre-mosaic 
Baintfl as Noah and Abraham were already monothe- 
i-i-: but that they used a singular or plural noun to 
designate their conception of the one God can be only 
a matter of conjecture. The term Klohhn in *his case 
may he only the best Hebrew translation of the now- 
unknown term used by them. However this may he, 
it is a noticeable fact that in the Divine appearance- to 
Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and subsequently, Jehovah was 
accustomed to introduce himself as the God of Abra- 
ham, the God of Isaac and Jacob, the God which 
brought thee up out of Egypt, etc, thus testifying, not 
only to his faithfulness, hut also to his identity, and 
enabling those addressed to distinguish him from a 
supposed god of the adjacent nations in whose exist- 
ence they might believe. The term Klohhn, then, was 
a simple, ordinary plural, and not a metaphysical one. 
When, however, the Hebrew language came to he 
used as the vehicle of revelation a new meaning was 
gradually injected into this word, a- was also the case 
in regard to many others. But if a polytheistic Egyp- 
tian, or Canaanite, familiar with the Hebrew language, 
but not with the Hebrew theology, had heard the 
word used (e. ir. as in Gen. 1. I) he would doubtless 
have understood it in a polytheistic sense. For this, 
among the other reasons, it was necessar) that the 

covenant people should have a distinctive name for the 
Divine Being, which was furnished in the word Jeho- 
vah, and which will he further considered in a subse- 
quent section. 

2. The Egyptians possessed no developed cosmog- 
ony* or tneory concerning the origin of the world and 
of man. Hut that the Israelite- of the early Mosaic 



122 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

period, at least the more faithful and enlightened 
among them, recognized the Elohim of Abraham as 
the Creator of both is evident from the time of their 
early history. As yet, however, the first chapters of 
Genesis had not been written, not in their present 
form at least, and we can only infer that they reflected 
the view concerning the origin of things of the patri- 
archs and Israelites of the early Mosaic period. But 
the inference is based on the fact that Abraham was 
the "Friend of God" and the "Father of the Faithful." 
It is not probable that he who by reason of his inti- 
macy with God had been the recipient of the sublime 
doctrine of monotheism, and even of a vision of 
'Christ's day,' would be left in error concerning the 
origin of the world and himself. The same is also 
true in regard to the revelation of tlependence, ac- 
countability, etc. , which man sustains to God. 

At the time of the exodus, however, the Israelites 
were evidently retrograding in respect to the purity 
of doctrinal beliefs; and it was necessary that their 
views on these matters should be reshaped by an in- 
spired teacher, here at the very threshold of their na- 
tional history. It requires a definite knowledge of 
some things, and strong convictions; to make a great 
nation, no less than it does to make a great man. 
Nothing else can give it the force necessary to carry it 
over the obstacles that will inevitably lie in its way. 
Had it not been for some things that lay behind it, the 
Israelites of the exodus could not have achieved the 
supposed future which lay before it. Moses could 
have led no band of Egyptians into the wilderness and 
transformed them, even in forty years, into the chosen 
people. These considerations suggest the early date 



THE M08 UC PERIOD. 128 



of Gen. L, and indeed of the whole book of Genesis. 

It is not at all probable that the Israelites would have 
passed through the greater pari, oreveo a considerable 
part, of their national history, before putting into or- 
derly Bhape their divinely-authenticated views and tra- 
ditions on subjects bo important, in relation to them- 
selves, as those which make up the hook of Genesis. 
And to be convinced of the supernatural character of 
the contents of Genesis one scarcely needs more than 
compare it with the extra -biblical theology and history. 
specimens of which have been given in the preceding 
pages. 

Chapteb II. 



Till- mosaic DOCTRINE <>F GOD. 

§1. The Name ti Jehovah." 

1. The word "Jehovah," in the ftfosoretic text of 
the Hebrew Bible, as is well known, generally has the 
vowel pointing of the word Adonay, lord. On ac- 
count of their excessive reverence for the former name, 
based upon a misinterpretation of Lev. xxiv. L6, the 
later Jews would not even pronounce it, but substi- 
tuted in its place the latter name. They were followed 
in this by the translators of the King James 1 Bible, 
and later by the Canterbury revisers, and hence the 
word "Lord" in our English Old Testament i- always 
to he distinguished from "Lord." and i- to he under- 
stood a- representing J>h<>r<i}, in the original. The 
primitive and correct mode of pronouncing the word 
has been entirely, and probably forever, l<»-t; Javeh, 
or Yaweh, i^ becoming the generally received mode of 



124 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

pronunciation among scholars; but the form Jehovah 
will doubtless always maintain its hold on the popular 
English mind and heart, and little practical or other 
benefit is derived from any attempt to change it. It 
is derived from the imperfect tense of the verb hawah, 
the other form of hay ah, signifying to he, the verb and 
tense occurring in the well-known passage, Ex. iii, 14: 
u And God said unto Moses, I am that I am, and he 
said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I 
am hath sent me unto you." The name signifies, He 
who is what He is. It designates God as eternal and 
immutable, and who, therefore, will never be other 
than the same, both as to his essence, and also his 
moral attributes. This name certainly carries with it 
the idea of the invariable faithfulness of God, and 
suggests his absolute independence, in as much as he 
who is eternally arid immutably what he is cannot be 
affected or conditioned by that which is exterior to 
himself. 

2. Did the name Jenovah originate with the coven- 
ant people, or was it, like the name Elohim, incorpor- 
ated into the language from the adjacent heathenism ? 
Each opinion has its advocates — though the former 
view is to be regarded as the true one. Was it known to 
the patriarchs, or was it revealed, for the first time, to 
Moses ? The fact that this name occurs almost innu- 
merable times in the book of Genesis does not of itself 
prpve anything as to the date of the origin of the name. 
It only shows, for the most part, that the author of 
the passages in Genesis where the name occurs was 
acquainted with it. Nor can the fact that it appears 
to be used by Eve (Gen. iv. 1), Lamech (v. 29), Abra- 
ham (xxii, 14), Eliezer (xxiv, 35), and others, be re- 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 125 



garded as proving anything more; the word Jehovah 
in such passages as these being, however, the transla 
Hon or equivalent of the one actually used by their re- 
spective speakers. The passage, Ez. \i. .'». appears to 
settle the question: "And I appeared unto Abraham, 
unto Isaac and unto Jacob, by the name of ElShadday 
(God Almighty^, but by my name, Jehovah, was I not 
known to them." Bui this is not to be construed as 
teaching thai the word Jehovah was an abrupt inven- 
tion, here appearing in the Hebrew language for the 
firsl time. The word had doubtless long existed in 
tin* language in one form or another, hut here it is 
made to designate an aspect of the Divine Being not 
hitherto fully disclosed, and which the word only could 
fully express. Hence, virtually, the Divine Being had 
not been previously known by this name. This seems 
to be the plain teaching of the text; nor is it to he re- 
garded as strange or remarkable, for even in this new 
dispensation of the church men not infrequently pass 
through experiences which exhibit God to them in an 
entirely new light, and cause them to apply names to 
him which had hitherto been devoid of any significance 
to them. And. indeed, at the hot, he is only partially 

known even to the most advanced New Testament 
s tint. 

■ \. The theological import of the word Jehovah, as 
compared with Ml. or Klohim: It has been suggested 
that "the great epochs of the history of the chosen 
penplr are marked by the several names by which, in 

each, the Divine nature i> indicated," and the BUggest- 
ion is justified, to some extent, by what appears to he 
the fact in the case. In the patriarchal aire, the oldest 
Hebrew form by which the most general idea of Divin- 



126 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ity is expressed is El. Elohim, the Mighty One, the 
Mighty Ones, or simply The Mighty, which title con- 
tinued to appear in such old proper names as Beth-el, 
the house of El; Peni-El, the face of El, "as memorials 
of this primitive mode of address and worship. " It is 
not probable that El, or Elohim, was at first the name 
of a personal Deity, but was rather a term designating 
divinity in general, or the abstract idea of divinity, 
like Theos in Greek, or Deus in Latin, this divinity 
individualized being designated by another word, as 
Baal, Bel, Chemosh, Moloch, etc., corresponding to 
Jove,Zeus, Jupiter, etc., among the Greeks and Romans. 
In process of time, however, like other appellations, it 
became a proper noun, designating not merely a qual- 
ity or attribute, but a personal God. This circumstance 
may help to account for the fact that El, or Elohim, 
like Theos in Greek, is used both with and without the 
definite article, even when applied to the true God. 
But the Divine Being was conceived of, outside of the 
sphere of revelation, not as ruling in history, but 
rather as ruling over history, as Creator, Preserver and 
Judge, and to this aspect of the Divine action, the 
name Elohim corresponded. He was the God whose 
position was outside of human history. He was the 
God of the world at large, whom the heathen also 
might recognize, though they stood in no covenant re- 
lation to him. The name Elohim, to the Israelite, im- 
plied that the Divine actions of creating, preserving 
and judging are capable of being developed., or, "that 
they can reach the appointed end, but not that they 
will also actually reach it."* 

But the introduction of the name Jehovah was the 

*Kurtz' SaZred History. 



THE Mosaic PERIOD. \ y, 



beginning of a new era in Hebrew theology, the name 
Jehovah Sabaoth being Introduced at a still later period, 
and characterizing the era of prophetism. Jehovah is 
the Divine Being, ruling not merely over history, but 
also in history. He is t he One who not merely can, but 
actually will develop his purpose in creating, preserv- 
ing and governing, and cany it on to its appointed 
end. lie is Klohim individualized, and comes into 
personal covenant relation with man. God appeared 
unto Moses in the flaming bush, and calls himself the 
El of Abraham, the El of thy fathers, etc., thus ena- 
bling Moses to identify him, and distinguish him from 
Divinity as conceived of and worshiped by other na- 
tions. The old conception of the Divine Being having 
thus been linked with the new. Jehovah became hence- 
forth a memorial name to all generations of Hebrews; 
and, under the form of Jehovah Klohim. it was a per- 
petual reminder, both of his personal identity, and of 
his covenant; the name of him who both essentially 
and morally is always what he is, distinguished from 
whomsoever else might bo called El, and' to attribute 
change to whom, or deny his faithfulness to hisprom- 
ise is t.» deny his being. Whenever the Old Testament 
saints addressed Elohim as Jehovah, they addressed 
him as one whom they understood to he their God in a 
peculiar covenant sense, justasthey understood them- 
selves to be his people in a sense in which i the* other 
nations were not. An analogous distinction appears 
m New Testament theology, in as much as the Divine 
Being is all men's God, while he is the Father of only 
tl,r adopted, the actual Saviour of only the believer. 
The books of the Old Testament wen- written after 

the revelation of the New Name to Moses, after the 



128 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

term Elohim and Jehovah were thoroughly associated 
in the minds, at least, of the more enlightened of the 
people; hence the interchangeableness of the two names, 
and the apparent indifference with which the writers of 
these books use the one name or the other. But the 
name Jehovah never lost its special and precious sig- 
nificance; not at least until the later ages, when Old 
Testament theology begins to fade away into the the- 
ology of scribes and rabbis, and the name begins to be 
enveloped in superstition, until finally it disappears 
from the spoken language.* 

§2. God as the Only One. 

The Mosaic doctrine of God is unequivocally mono- 
theistic. But that the Israelites themselves were, at 
this period of their history, pronounced monotheists, 
cannot be affirmed. Their doctrine of the Divine Be- 



*Already, at the time of the Samaritan secession, in the days 
of Nehemiah, the change began to operate. In their usages, in- 
stead of the word Jehovah, was substituted Shemeh — the Name; 
but they still had retained the word unaltered in their own 
copies of the law. But the Jews of Jerusalem, in the place of 
the ancient name, substituted, first by pronunciation, and 
then by changing the points of the vowels, throughout the sacred 
writings, the word Adonay, Lord or Master — the same word that 
appears for the Phoenician deity, whom the Syrian maidens 
mourned on Lebanon; by the time that the Greek translators of 
the Hebrew Scriptures undertook their task, they found that this 
conventional phrase had become completely established, and 
therefore, wherever the word JehovaJi occurs in the Hebrew, 
misrendered it Kurios, Master (or Lord); and the Latin trans- 
lators, following the Greek, misrendered it again, with their eyes 
open, Dominus; and the Protestant versions (including the Can- 
terbury, or Revised English,) with a few rare exceptions, mis- 
rendered it yet again, "Lord," and thus it came to pass that the 
most expressive title of the Eternal and Self -Existent, which, in 
the time of Moses and Samuel, of Elijah and Isiah, it would have 



THE \f08A10 PERIOD 129 

ing was not such as to exclude the very possibility of 
other Gods, nor even the actuality of them. 
They may have believed in the essential oneness of 

Divinity, jusl as the element of human nature in a 
human individual is one and the same. Bui the doe- 
trine of Divine unity is not the counterpart of the doc- 
trine of human unity, or of the unity of the human 
race. The doctrine of the Divine unity is the doctrine 
of the absolute Divine oneness. If the possession on 
the pari of any being of a divine element, or an ele- 
ment held in common with God, constituted that be- 
ing a god, then, indeed, it may he said there are gods 
many, and it might become a question, as it actually 
did, which of these is the supreme one. 

That polytheism, in one form or another, was the 
besetting sin of the Israelites, is evident from the 

been deemed a sin to keep silent, it became in these later ages a 
sin to pronounce. On the misconstruction, which had been thus 
dictated by superfluous reverence, were engrafted all manner of 
fancies and exaggerations. The most extravagant superstitions 
were attached to this rejection of the sacred phrase, as confi- 
dently as in earlier times they would have been attached to its 
assertion. The Greek translators even went the length of alter- 
ing or retaining the alteration of a text in Leviticus, which con- 
demns to death any one who blasphemed the name of Jehovah, 
into the condemnation of any one who pronounces it. The 
name itself lingered only in the mouth of the High Priest, who 
uttered it only on the ten occasions which required it, on the 
day of atonement; and after the time of Simon the Just, even 
this was in a whisper. If any one else gained possession of it, 
it was a talisman, by which, if he was bold enough to utter its 
mysterious sound, miracles could be worked, and magical arts 
exercised. "The Ineffable Name," the Tetramaton, became 
a charm, analogous to tnose secret, sacred name- on which the 
heathen writers had already prided themselves. — Stanly's Jew- 
ish Church, Sec. xlv. 



130 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



whole course of their history, and from the nature of 
the discipline imposed upon them, from the time of the 
exodus unto the time of the Babylonian exile. And 
the object of God in furnishing the new name, Jeho- 
vah, as the symbol of the new aspect of his character 
and being which he had revealed to them, was, that it 
might serve them, not only as a perpetual reminder of 
the covenant relation in which he had stood to them 
since the time of Abraham, but also a means whereby 
they might be drilled into the knowledge of his eternal 
and exclusive oneness. It was easier to indoctrinate 
them by means of a new, untarnished name, and yet 
full of meaning peculiar to itself, than it was to teach 
them by means of an old name, already stained with 
the impure conceptions of heathenism. The Egyptians 
had called the Divine Being (or a divine being) Osiris; 
but manifestly no such name of Elohim as this would 
do, and hence the name Jehovah becomes the core in 
which the Mosaic teachings concerning God are made 
to inhere. In becoming accustomed to call him by a 
new name, they would also become accustomed to 
eliminate from their conceptions of him the old heath- 
enish attributes, and attach to him the true ones. 

Thus was the lost ground, occupied by Abraham, 
in regard to the Divine unity, regained. Hear, O Is- 
rael: The Lor a our God is one Lord. Or, in the 
terser form of the original, Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, 
our Elohim, Jehovah one (Deut. vi, 4), was tlestined to 
become the Creed of the Jews. But it was not at this 
period. It asserts that Jehovah, and he alone, is the 
absolute, uncaused God, the very one who by reason 
of his choice of them as his people, had made himself 
known to them. But the assertion of this absolute 



THE Mosaic PERIOD. 181 



and exclusive oneness of Jehovah God had to be re- 
peatod in one form and another over and over again. 
"Thou shall have no other gods before me" (Ex. w. 
3; Deut v, 7) was only another way of Baying, "I 
Jehovah, am the only God, and thou' shall so recog 
uv/v me." Ii was fundamentally necessary to their 
indoctrination in other matters thai they "should; and 
the earnestness and repetition 'with which this is in- 
sisted upon testifies, nol only to its importance, but 
also to the fact that it was a truth which the [sraelites 
had not as yei thoroughly grasped. "Unto thee" 
says Moses to them, "untotheeit was showed, that thou 
Brightest know that Jehovah he is God; there is none 
e,8C besides him" . . . "know therefore thisday; 
and consider it in thine heart, that Jehovah he is God 
in heaven above, and upon earth beneath; there is none 
else." (Deut. iv, 35,39). 

Hut the doctrine that Jehovah was God, and the 
only one, was taught otherwise than m assertions 
hinged upon the name, or in inferences deduced from 
the knowledge which the people may have had of it. 
meaning. It was taught also in object lessons in the 
form of miracles, victories, defeats, and other events. 
When the escape from Egypt was bo strangely and 
marvelously effected, it was emphasized that it was 
Jehovah who did it, and that he did it in opposition to 
the god of Pharaoh. Ex. riii, 21, 22; xiv, 13, 14, 31; 
-w, ♦;. :. The proof of the superiority of Jehovah 
would ultimately become proof that the god i^\ Egypt 
was no God. When water was needed for the fam- 
ishing host, the fact was emphasized that he who 
caused if to issue in abundance from the dry rocks of 
thedeserl was Jehovah. Ex. xvii, 1-7. When the 



132 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

people hungered for bread and meat it was empha- 
sized that he who furnished it in a way in which no 
other being could was Jehovah (Ex. xvi, 4-35). When 
the battle was raging against the Amalekites it was 
impressed upon the people that he who gave the vic- 
tory was Jehovah (Ex. xvii, 8-16). The proof that 
Jehovah God was mightier than the gods of Amalek, 
Moab, and the rest, would ultimately become proof 
that the latter were no gods. The same lesson in re- 
gard to the absolute and exclusive Divinity of Jeho- 
vah was taught negatively in the defeats of the Israel- 
ites, in as much as these were a lively exhibition to 
them of the direful results of want of faith in Jehovah 
as the Only One. Sanai was a brilliant and thunder- 
ing proclamation of the same fundamental doctrine, 
the people being made to know that the lightning, and 
thunder and • quaking were caused by the presence of 
Jehovah in the mount. The Tabernacle, also, with 
its ritual, was designed, in part, to fix their minds 
upon the fact, and to accustom them more and more 
to the fact of the absolute oneness of Jehovah as con- 
tradistinguished from all other gods, and that he alone 
should be the object of their worship and faith. U I, 
Jehovah thy Elohim am a jealous Elohim" (Ex. xx, 
5), tolerating the worship of no being but himself, and 
zealous in the defense of his honor as the only one in 
whom they should have any faith or repose any trust 
. — the eternal, absolute, Only God, "visiting the iniq- 
uity of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generation" of those denying this truth, 
"and showing mercy unto thousands [or unto the 
thousandth generation] of them that love and keep my 
commandments. " 



THE MOSAIC />!■:/; !<>/>. 188 



God 08 Invisible "/></ $p irttual. 

The doctrine* of the spirituality of God was perhaps 
not peculiar to Mosaism; bul Mosaism eliminated from 

the doctrine it- impure heathenish accretions and em- 
phasized it by means of both word and symbol. It is 
no where, however, expressly stated in the Penta- 
teuchal books that God is Spirit, or that God is a 

Spirit: and the reason for this i> that the mere fact was 
not doubted.* It only needed to he exhibited in its 
proper light and enforced. Jehovah proceeded to do 
this by means of both a negative and a positive 
method. 

In the first place it is worthy of notice that Jehovah 
ceases, for the mosl part, to appear onto his people in 
human form (as he had appeared at leasl in former 
times), to say nothing of the bestial impersonation of 
Klohim common among the heathen. In order that 
he may elevate their conception of him; in order that 
he may draw them nififh unto him, he withdraws him- 
self from them. He appears unto them in the pillar of 
cloud, or of fire, or as a formless presence, or as only 
a voice. Jehovah spoke unto them out of the midst 
of the tire: they heard the voice of his words, hut saw 
no similitude: only a voice (Deut iv, li'i. "There 
shall no man see me and live" (Ex. xxxiii. 20) was a 
suggestion of his spirituality as well as a proclamation 

*The saying of Christ to the woman of Samaria, "God is a 
Spirit [or God is Spirit], and they that worship him," etc (John 
iv. 34), was not intended by him as a new revelati >n to her of a 
hitherto unknown doctrine of the spirituality of God. On the 
contrary, the doctrine was well known, not only to the Samari- 
tans, but through the Old Testament time-, and Christ simply 
meant that in as much as God is Spirit he ought *o be wor- 
shiped, etc. 



134 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

of his transcendent glory. Only unto Moses was 
vouchsafed special vision and revelation of Jehovah, 
and even to him as "through a glass darkly" (Ex. 
xxxiii, 22, 23). 

In the second place, the prohibition by Jehovah of 
all forms of image worship was both a positive proof 
of his spirituality and a step in the process of purify- 
ing the Israelitish conception of him, u Thou shalt not 
make unto thee any graven image, * or any likeness of 
anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth 
beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth. Thou 
shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; 
for I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God," etc. (Ex. 
xx, 4, 5). The denial of the existence of Elohim was 
not dreamed of among the Israelites, nor was it likely 
that they would ever wholly repudiate the name Jeho- 
vah, by which they had begun to call him. But, as an 
illustration of the gross and material nature of their 
conception of him, and of the influence upon them of 
Egyptian heathenism, it is sufficient to recall the fact 
that, even while Moses was on the mount, receiving 
from Jehovah instructions concerning the organization 
and government of the people, they were in the valley 
below, making and worshiping the golden calf — as a 
symbol, most probably, of Divinity, though, perhaps, 
not of Jehovah. The words of Aaron (Ex. xxxii, 5) 
indicate that he meant it as the visible representation 
of the invisible Jehovah, the ox being the symbol of 
strength with which he was familiar in Egypt. But it 
is not likely the people had any well-defined view as to 
whom the calf represented. The exceeding severity of 
the punishment inflicted upon the people for this idola- 



77/ A' M0BA1C PERIOD. i:;:, 



trous defection is sufficiently justified on the ground of 
the exceeding importance of the doctrine of the Divine 
spirituality, to Bay Dothing of other attributes which 
were also involved. The destiny of the Israelites, of 

the human rare indeed, depended upon the ineuleation 

and preservation among men of the knowledge of the 

true God, to which end the knowledge, also, of hi- 
spirituality was fundamental. 

But how shall we account for the anthropomorphisms 
with which Mosaism abounds? Simply by affirming 
that, the Israelites understood them according to their 
obvious import — that is, that they were mere figures of 

speech. 

§4, God as the Holy 0/>e. 

It was also necessary that the Israelites should be 

instructed, at the very outset of their ministry as a na- 
tion, in regard to the holiness of Jehovah God. But 
in order to this end, the idea of holiness had, in large 
part, t<> he coined anew. The word, ormold, employed 
for this purpose had, perhaps, existed in their language 
from it- beginning, but a new meaning had to be in- 
fused into it. 

The word translated "holy" occurs for the first time in 
Ex. iii. :.: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the 
place whereon thou standest i- holy ground." Moses 
attached no moral quality to the ground, of course, hut 
he understood aright that it was no common ground, 
and was not to he stood upon a- such. The invisible 
presence of One whose Voice he had heard issuing 
from the flame would cause him instinctively to separ- 
ate it in his mind from the adjacent ground. The 
\ nice commanding him to put oil' his -hoe- awakened 



136 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the instinct, but so far as we may argue from this iso- 
lated instance, we cannot infer that Moses either did 
or did not attach to the Speaker all that we understand 
by the moral quality of holiness. The Speaker meant, 
doubtless, more than the hearer at first understood, as 
is generally the case when a teacher begins to teach. 
The object of the Speaker was to awaken an idea which 
may have lain in the mind of the pupil in the form of 
a dormant instinct, and he begins in the only practical 
way, that is, by using a figure of speech: "Take the 
shoes from off thy feet, for the ground whereon thou 
standest is not to be regarded as common ground, be- 
cause of my presence here. " The idea of apartness, 
separation, difference between it and the common, 
could soon be transferred in the mind of the pupil from 
the ground to the Speaker who occupied it. Had Je- 
hovah said outright: "Take thy shoes off thy feet, for 
I, who am present here, am holy," using the word 
holy in our fully developed sense of the term, Moses 
might not have caught the lesson intended to be con- 
veyed; and yet it is true that he had an extraordinary 
natural basis for Divine instruction which rendered 
him the most available and readiest recipient of reve- 
lations wholly supernatural. But whether Moses him- 
self had, or did not have, from the beginning of his 
course the fully developed idea of the holiness of 
Jehovah, it is certain that the people of Israel did not 
have it. And it is also certain that one of the great 
truths which Jehovah was constantly seeking to instill 
into their minds, through the instrumentality of Moses, 
was the truth that Jehovah is holy, and hence they 
should be so. "I am Jehovah that bringeth you up 
out of the land of Egypt, to be your God; ye shall 



THE VOSMC rnillOD. 187 



therefore be holy, for lain holy" (Lev. \i, 45). Speak 
unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and 

>a\ unto them, Ye -hall be holy; for I Jehovah your 
God am holy ( Lev. six, 2). 

But what idea did the Israelites attach to the word 
''holy" as applied to Jehovah I The answer can be 
inferred from the idea which they attached to it, 
when applied to themselves; and this in turn may he 

inferred from the law distinguishing all animals into 

■ 

two classes of clean and unclean, to say nothing of 
other laws illustrating the same truth. The object of 
this law is expressly stated in Lev. xx, ^4- ^P>. *'I am 
Jehovah your God which have separated you from 
other people, ye shall therefore put a difference be- 
tween clean beasts and unclean And ye 

shall be holy unto me; for I Jehovah am holy, and have 
saved you from other people, that ye should be mine." 
As this distinction would perpetually remind them of 
the difference between themselves and other nations, 
so would it necessarily remind them of the difference 
between Jehovah and the gods of the heathen — their 

own a/partneBB in respect to other peoples always 
being expressly associated with the apartness of Jeho- 
vah from other gods, and from all creation. But 
apartness, or difference, in respect to what \ The 
answer is in respect principally to cleanliness, or 
purity. The purity of places and animal bodies, how- 
ever, did not consist in their separation from others, 
but Was rather based upon it. Originally the thing 
Was called pure, or holy, because it had been separated 
from the common: and afterwards by transferring the 
thought from the domain of the material to that of the 
moral and spiritual the idea could be grasped that the 



138 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



separation consisted in difference of purity. Thus Je- 
hovah became the Holy One in the sense of the Pure 
One. He was so pre-eminently pure that in contrast 
with him the gods of the nations were not called so at 
all. He thus became the standard of his own charac- 
ter and conduct. Whatever he was or whatever he 
did was right. He also thus became the standard of 
his people. His law was the expression of himself: 
what ever was out of harmony with his law or fell 
below the purity of himself was unholy or sinful. 

The complex idea of the Divine holiness, therefore, 
which it was sought to instill into the minds of the Is- 
raelites, and which should serve as the standard 
whereby to regulate themselves was (1) apartness 
from all so called gods recognizing them in no sense 
and having nothing in common with them, (2) that 
quality or disposition in him which causes him to make 
himself known to and communicate himself to the 
creature, especially to his people, (3) especially sepa- 
ration from all the moral influences of the so called 
gods and of all creatures; that element of the Divine 
nature which excludes all communion with or partici- 
pation in that which is sinful or wicked. 

§5 Attributes Implied in Holiness. 

It follows from what has been said above, that as 
the Israelite came to know God as holy in himself 
they would also at the same time come to know him 
as holy in all his actions and dealings. He in whose 
nature no wrong was involved could do no wrong to 
others. Hence the Holy One would also be the Just 
One. The fact that Jehovah is Jehovah implies that 
he is faithful in the sense of true to his own nature; 



TUB MOSAIC PERIOD, 180 



hut the fact lh:i1 he is holy implies, not only thai he is 
just, I > 1 1 1 also thai he is faithful in the sense of true to 
bis word. He who is faithless deceives; he who de- 
ceives is not holy, and he who deceives is not just. 
Justice and faithfulness may therefore he called the 
ethical side of the Divine holiness, and as such are the 
same as the Divine righteousness and truth. Bu1 he 
who i^ jusl in his own character and acts, can not ap- 
prove of thai which is not so in the character and con- 
duct of any of his creatures, whether in their relation 
to one another or to himself. Hence the Divine jeal- 
ousy or zeal with which Jehovah would defend his 
own honor. Hence, again, the Divine law to the peo- 
ple, whether in regard to their relations to one an- 
other or to himself would have its origin in the Divine 
character, and would at the same time serve as a me- 
dium through which the Divine character could he 
-ecu and known. The Israelites could not at firsl rec 
ognize the law as holy, just, and good, because they rec- 
ognized the Jehovah as such; hut they would firsl per 
ceive the law to he such and then conclude that so 
must its author he. The law must therefore, he, to 
some extent, an appeal to the natural instincts, or in- 
tuitions of the people, and at the same time further 
awaken and educate them. It does not follow from 
this, however, that the Israelites might themselves have 
originated the law. for the law as light, awakens the 

sense of vision, and the sense of vision in turn recog- 
nizes the law BS light. 

Bui the Israelites were not left to infer these things, 
nor to depend on the expression of them a- involved in 
the law. They were taught in plain words that Jeho- 
vah, their God, was THE Rock, a God who possessed 



140 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



immutability and impregnable strength as attributes, 
not only of his being, but also of his nature; a God 
whose "work is perfect," all his ways being judgment, a 
God of truth, or faithfulness to his word, without in- 
iquity or unfairness, just and right (Deut. xxxii, 4). 
"Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the 
people which are round about you; (for Jehovah, thy 
God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of 
Jehovah, thy God, be kindled against thee, and de- 
stroy thee from off the face of the earth." (Deut. vi, 14.) 
Again, "Of the Rock that begot thee thou art unmind- 
ful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee." "They 
have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; 
they have provoked me to anger with their vanities." 
(Deut. xxxii, 8, 21) ; from which it appears that it is idol- 
atry which most provokes the Divine jealousy, because 
it argues faithlessness to Jehovah on the part of the 
people whom he had chosen, and who had been the ob- 
ject of his special care. Jehovah's wrath is presented 
as the manifestation of his jealousy or zeal in the de- 
fense of his wounded honor as the only God, and also 
as the manifestation of his love, wounded by the faith- 
lessness and ingratitude of those whom he had chosen, 
and upon whom he had lavished his love so liberally. 

But justice is both legislative and judicial. In the 
one case it imposes rules of conduct; in the other, it in- 
flicts punishments and bestows rewards. 

The actual experience of the Israelites of this legis- 
lative and judicial justice of Jehovah, as well as the 
actual oral teachings communicated through Moses, 
was a long course of tuition in which they also had op- 
portunity to learn of him also as the God of Love, as 
evinced in his manifest goodness to them as a people; 



Tin: wa HO ri:i:mn m 



in his forgiveness of them when they sinned; in his 

mercy toward them when they Buffered; and in his 
long-suffering toward them when they resisted him, as 

they often did. (Ex. xxxiv, 6, 7). "Ob thai there 
were such :i he:irt in them that they would fear me, 
and keep nil my commandments always, thai it might 
be well with them and their children for ever." 1 Dent. 
v. 29.) 

The omnipresence of Jehovah God rs not taught in 
Mosaism, though it is plainly presupposed or implied, 
and is expressly affirmed in the immediately subse- 
quent period, in such passages as I Kgs. viii, i ; 7; Ps. 
cxxxix, 7. s : Jer. xxiii, 23. Jehovah may have been 
regarded at first by many of the Hebrews as a merely 
local and tutelary God. one among the many, but this 
was not the doctrine taught. The teaching concerning 
him as the Only One would inure them to the concep- 
tion of his omnipresence. 

§6. God as Creator <mcL Sovereign. 

That the Israelites were taught at this early period 
of their history to look upon Jehovah as the Creator 
and absolute Sovereign of all things and creatures is 

implied in what has been said in the preceding section. 

The following passages, however, are directly to the 
point: "For in six days Jehovah made heaven and 
earth, the sea and all that in them i-.*' i Ivx. xx. ii.) 
"Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is Je- 
hovah's, thy God, the earth, also, with all that th rein 
is." 1 Dent, x, 14.) See also Num. xvi, 22; xxvii. L6, 

etc. 

1. God as Creator* The passages above quoted un- 
doubtedly belong to the period of Mosaism. The first 



142 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

chapter of Genesis is only an expansion of what is here 
presented in a nutshell. We may assume that the es- 
sential theory of creation embodied in this chapter be- 
longs also to the Mosaic period. The declarations in 
subsequent periods of Old Testament theology on the 
subject of the Divine relation to the world are always 
presented, as well known and recognized truths, and 
not in the aspect of new revelations; so that such state- 
ments as Psa. lxxxix, 11; cxv, 16, etc., may be re- 
garded also as the doctrine of Mosaism. The Mosaic 
doctrine of creation places itself far a bove all heathen 
and non-biblical theories, by the sublime declaration: 
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth;" though it is obvious that the first chapter of 
Genesis and the subsequent inspired commentaries 
upon it are, so far as their form is concerned, ad- 
dressed to the religious faith of the people, rather than 
to their scientific curiosity. It stands in direct contra- 
diction to the atheistic theory of chance. The world 
was not produced by any process of self-generation, nor 
by the unintelligent action of impersonal forces, nor by 
many agents like the good and evil principles of the 
Persian theory, with which the Israelites may have be- 
come acquainted during the Babylonian captivity. It 
denies all forms of Pantheism, for it presents the crea- 
tion as distinct from the world, and as exalted above 

• ' • . .... 

the world. It implies, and it implied it to the Israel- 

itish mind, the eternity of the God whose existence it 
assumes, for, having created all things, he must be be- 
fore all things; it implied his omnipotence, for he who 
created the heavens and the earth could do anything 
that was conceivable; it implied his absolute freedom, 
for it represented him not only as beginning a new 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD 148 

course of action, but as doing ii by the free exercise of 
his own will; it also implied to them his infinite wisdom, 
for Buch an orderly heaven and earth as was known 
even to the Israelites could be the product onlv of a 
mind of absolute intelligence. It represented Elohim 
whom the [sraelites had been taught to recognia 
identical with Jehovah, as creating, by means of his 
Word %nd spirit. "God said," and it was done: his 
spirit moved or brooded, as if incubating or animating 
and calling forth life in the new. inanimate, unarranged 
creation. But the knowledge of the triune personality 
of God, and the relation of the three Persons, respect- 
ively, to the Creation, doe- not seem to have heen dis- 
tinctly revealed to the Israelites of this period. His 
Spirit, though presented a- animating (Gen. i, ■_': ii, 7); 
a- solving with man ivi, 3), and as enlightening (Ex. 
xxxi, :»i. is nowhere clearly distinguished as a distinct 
personality from himself. 

2. God as Governor and Preserver of aU Things. 
Mosaism, as well as all subsequent facts of the Old 
Testament, taught in the strongest terms the doctrine 
of the Divine Sovereignty; not because of the slowness 
of the [sraelites to accept it', but because of it- funda- 
mental importance. It is implied in the Genesis ac- 
count of creation. In creating, God also prescribed 
the law of the being, or life, of that which he created, 
as i- suggested in the often-recurring phrases, "and it 
was so," and "according to its kind/' It is implied in 
the command to multiply and exercise the dominion 
delegated to him. It i- implied in the destruction of 
the race, save the family of Noah; and in other known 
conspicuous events, the most recent of which are the 
deliverance of the [sraelites from Egypt and the over- 



144 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

throw of Pharaoh. Aside from the importance of the 
doctrine itself, the chief pomt in the tuition of the Is- 
raelites was to identify the Elohim who did these 
things with Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews. It was 
another way of proving to them the absolute and ex- 
clusive oneness of Jehovah The creation account, as 
contained in Gen. ii, would in this respect, be of more 
theological significance to them than Gen. i; so would 
the Jehovistic account of the deluge, as compared with 
those sections in which the name Elohim is used. 
(Compare e. g. ch. vi, 5, with xi, 12; vi, 7, with vi, 13; 
vii, 5, with vi, 22, etc. 

Such passages, also as Psa. xciii, 1; xcvi, 10; civ, 
cxlvii, 15-18, though they belong to a later period, 
represent the Mosaic doctrine of the Divine relation to 
the world as Governor and Preserv er(compare Ex. 
xv, 1-19). Little emphasis was placed upon secondary 
causes and natural laws, only in so far as these were 
expressly declared either to have their origin in him or 
to be subject to him. All things,material and immaterial, 
rational and irrational, owed not only their existence, 
but the continuation and regulation of their existence 
to Jehovah God. The Mosaic doctrine of Providence 
asserted not only the overruling, but the immediate 
and special in-ruling of God, in the sphere both of the 
physical world and of human history. Gen. xlv, 7, 8, 
expresses not merely the view of Joseph, but of Mosa- 
ism generally, and of the whole Old Testament. It 
was Jehovah who ordered the events ,vhich resulted in 
the hardening of Pharaoh's heart) Ex. iv, 21). "Who 
speaketh and it cometh to pass, without God having 
commanded it V . . . u Out of the mouth of the 
Most High should not evil come, as well as good ! " 



THE yWSAIC PERIOD. 145 

(Lam. iii, 87, 39.) ''Who forms light and creates 
darkness, who makes peace and produces evil." . 

"Why doth a man murmur at his life? " seeing 
that it is Jehovah who doeth all this. (Isa. xlv, 71.) 

The same doctrine appears also in the Gospels in 
the often recurring formula, "Thus it was done in 
order that it might he fulfilled," (Me., in which the "in 
order that" is to be construed in its proper telic sense. 
But that none of these sayings were to be understood 
as denying human free agency, and consequently, 
human accountability, is evident from the whole drift 
of the teaching. "Why doth a man murmur at his 
life?" is followed by "Let every one murmur over his 
sins;" man's history, being a duplex thing, made up a 
Divine and a human factor. 

Physical evil is presented in the Pentateuch as a Di- 
vine punishment for sin, or as a Divine "means of 
proving his obedience and his trust in God,' 1 and 
thereby of strengthening, encouraging and purifying 
him (Dent, viii; 2f). In its relation to the moral evil 
the Divine sovereignty manifests itself, not in produc- 
ing it, but in so overruling it as to make it subservi- 
ent to the Divine purpose, (Gen. 1, 20), in which 
sense the act of which moral evil is predicted is de- 
scribed as being God's own act, as in Gen. xlv, 20; 
Ex. vii. 21, etc. Moral evil is also used as a means of 
trying and purifying others than those who committed 
it, as in Deut. xiii, 3, and also of vindicating the Di- 
vine justice. But, after all the distinguishing peculi- 
arity of Mosaism, and indeed, of the whole Old Testa- 
ment, in regard to the sovereignty of God, was the 
emphasis which it placed upon the Divine side of all 
that comes to pass, rather than upon the human. 



146 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



His sovereignty was not divided or shared with another. 

3. The Divine Purpose in the Creation, Govern- 
ment and Preservation of the World. Questions of 
teleology are not likely to receive much of an infant 
nation's attention. Problems more practical in their m 
nature and of more immediate importance pressed 
upon the Israelites than the questions, why did God 
create the world ? and, what purpose has he in view 
in governing it and preserving it ? The main thing 
was to see that the national and individual life on 
earth was well ordered; and for this reason, in part at 
le..st, the Pentateuch contains little explicit teaching 
on the subject of final causes. But though the Is- 
raelites may not have formally raised such questions, 
Mosaism does not leave them wholly untouched. The 
frequently recurring formula in the account of crea- 
tion: "And God saw that it was good" implies not 
merely that it was fair and agreeable as an object of 
Divine contemplation, but that it was good for some- 
thing, well adapted to the end which God had in view 
in its creation. That this end was his own glory is 
evident from the fact that the creative work does not 
end until it reaches the culmination in the creation of 
man in the image of God himself. The material uni- 
verse, we conceive, would be aimless if there were no 
man; and man himself would be an unanswerable prob- 
lem, if there were no God. Sin disturbed the Divine 
purpose, but shall not thwart it. "As truly as I live," 
says Jehovah, "the whole earth shall be filled with the 
glory of Jehovah." (Num. xiv, 21). 

§7. Goal's Revelation of Himself to Man. 

Man cannot hold intercourse with spirit, as man does 
with man. God is pure spirit, and infinitely above 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 147 



man. In the infinite fullness of his being, he is beyond 

the reach of man. He must, therefore, bring himself 
down, in some way, within the limit of man's sphere, 
in order that man may have some degree of knowledge 
of him. Our inquiry is: what is the teaching of the 
Pentateuch on this point 8 The subject resolves itself 
into three parts: 1st, the Divine self-revelation itself; 
2d, its forms; 3d, the condition of the soul during the 
reception of the revelation. 

1. The Divine Self -Revelation Itself. It is not the 
revelation of some truth that is here discussed, but the 
revelation of the Divine Being himself, and by him- 
self. These revelations are characterized as the 
Divine Name, the Divine Presence or Face, and the 
Divine Glory. 

a. TJie Divine Name. As God could be known by 
man only in so far as he revealed himself to man, 
sometimes the revelation which he made of himself is 
called the Divine Name. It was an index, serving to 
point the people to certain attributes of his being or 
nature. The names of himself, therefore, which God 
gave to his people are to be considered from a differ- 
ent point of view from the names which the people 
gave to him. The former represented an actual incre- 
ment in their knowledge of God; the latter merely 
embodied such conceptions of him as were already 
had. '-And Moses said unto God . . . they 
shall say unto me, what is his name I " And God said 
unto Moses, "I am that I am . . . thus shall 
thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah 
hath sent me unto you; this is my name forever." < Ex. 
iii, 18; see also vi, 3; ix, 16; xv, 3; xx, 24: xxxiv, 14, 
etc. ) The name of God thus became equivalent to God 



148 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

himself, his whole administration and attributes. To 
know any particular name of him was to know him, in 
so far as that name revealed him. To profane his name 
in any way w T as to profane himself. 

b. The Divine Presence or Face. Bee Ex. xxxiii, 
ll-lo. In Deut. iv, 37, "brought thee out in his 
sight" is literally "by his face" — that is, "by the might 
of his personal presence. " This was a manifestation 
of God distinct from that made in the Divine Name, 
and also from the Divine essence. 

c. The Divine Glory. His essential glory neither 
vailed by a cloud nor represented by an angel; mani- 
fested only to Moses, and to him only in part; see Ex. 
xxxiii, 17-23, in which passage the term "glory" is 
not to be understood as a synonym of "presence" or 
"face." 

2. Forms of the Self- Revelation, a. The Divine 
Voice. The audible voice of Jehovah is here meant. 
Deut. iv, 12, is the principal passage. Doubtless the 
revelations were made on other occasions in the form 
of a voice. (See also Matt, xvii, 5; Jno. xii, 28). The 
Voice appears in the later Jewish theology. Bath 
Khol, not the Voice itself of Jehovah, but only as the 
Echo, or Daughter of the Voice. 

b. The Malakh. God also revealed himself as the 
Angel, generally called the Angel Jehovah, sometimes 
the Angel of Elohim. The principal passages are Gen. 
xvi, 7, and following; xviii, 1-33; xxi, 17; xxii, 12, 
and following; xxiv; xxxii; xlvii; Ex. iii, 2: xiii, 21; 
xxxii; Josh, v, 11 and following; Judges ii, 1-5; and 
Mai. iii, 1, where he is called the Angel, or Messen 
ger of the covenant. The problem of this "Angel of 
the Lord" is recognized by those who have attempted 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD \\<) 



its solution as one of the most difficult ones in biblical 
theology, and one "on which there have bom various 

views from the earliest qges of the church, and about 
which, to this day, no agreement has been reached."— 
(Oehler). Hodge, Watson, Hengstenberg, and main 

other able modern exegetes think the Malakh was the 
Christ of the Now Testament. This view was also 
held by many of the Greek fathers/as Justin Martyr. 
Ireneas, Tertullian, Cyprian and Eusebius. It is the 
view I prefer. Oehler, Kurtz, Delitesch, and others, 
hold a different opinion.* 

The Pentateuch makes only infrequent mention of 
the other angels, the "sons of God" of Gen. vi, 2, not 
being an instance in point. But however important 
the question as to who the Angel of Jehovah was may 
have been or may still be regarded i'rom the standpoint 
of Old Testament Christology, it concerns us here to 
consider this and other angels of the Pentateuch only 
as revealers of God. The doctrine of -the Angel" is also 
important in its connection with the angeiology of the 
Old Testament. 

c. Hie Shekinah. By this is here meant the abiding 

. __ & 

*Sometinies the same Divine appearance which at one time 
is called Malakh Jehovah is afterward called simply Jehovah, 
as Gen. xvi. 7f ; comp. v. 13; xxii, 11, comp. v. 12; xxxi, 11, comp! 
v. 16. This is to be so understood that the Angel of God is here 
nothing else than the invisible Deity itself, which thus unveils 
itself to mortal eyes. — Gesenius. But whichever may be the cor- 
rect view of the Angel of Jehovah, or the Angel Jehovah, it 
seems evident that the Israelites did not recognize in him the 
Messiah, whatever may have been the opinion of Malachi, 
later on, concerning the meaning of his own prophecy. While,' 
however, this angel may in reality have been the Christ, it is 
not likely that the earlier Old Testament writers meant to teach 
that he was. 



150 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

in a peculiar manner of the Divine Presence in one 
place, as distinguished from occasional manifestations 
otherwise and elsewhere. The cherubim of the garden 
of Eden are thought to have been this peculiar pres- 
ence of God, different from his more ordinary modes 
of self -manifestation. But the passage most in point 
here is Deut. xii, 5, a text rightly regarded as referring 
to the Shekinah in the above sense of the term. The 
purpose of the command is to centralize, as far as 
practical, the religious worship of the Israelites, and 
thereby diminish the liability to idolatry and polythe- 
ism. The inner tabernacle (and later the temple) was 
the peculiar dwelling place of the Divine Presence or 
Glory, and wherever the tabernacle was, there should 
be the center of the national worship. But the Shek- 
inah itself does not appear in the Pentateuch nor else- 
where in the Old Testament. It is peculiar to the later 
uninspired Jewish theology. 

d. Miracles. God also revealed himself in mira- 
cles, the term here being used in the sense of mani- 
festations of power, as (1) in the bringing about of 
such extraordinary events as are calculated to excite 
astonishment, and be referred to other than a human 
source, but without reference to the mode whereby 
they are accomplished (Ex. xv, 11); or (2) such mighty 
achievements as neither men nor any of the gods could 
accomplish, and which are therefore "exempt from the 
common course of nature and history," (Deut. iii: 24); 
or (3) such signs and wonders as were regarded as pe- 
culiar tokens, or proofs of divine authority (Ex. iv : 21 ; 
vii:3;Deut. xxviii:46). From none of the Hebrew 
words, however, used in these cases respectively, could 
it be inferred that the event described transcends 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 151 



human power, or in any way contravenes natural laws, 
those conclusions being based upon the peculiar char- 
acter and surroundings of the work itself. " Now 
also the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like man- 
ner with their enchantments' 1 (Ex. v i i : 11), tlie differ- 
ence between what they did and what Jehovah did, 
through Moses, not being apparent to the casual ob- 
server. But in other instances it was immediately 
obvious that the work done transcended human power, 
and lay outside the sphere of natural law, and hence 
was a more striking manifestation of a Divine Power 
and Person. 

c. 77te Spirit of God. Still another form of the 
Divine self-revelation was the spirit of God in man. 
In the Old Testament the spirit of God, or, which is 
the same thing, the spirit of Jehovah, is a divine power, 
or knowledge, or influence, communicated to man, not 
an indwelling in him of the personal Holy Spirit. This 
divine influence was communicated to the prophets and 
leaders of the covenant people for the purpose of endow- 
ing them with the gifts required for their calling. "And 
I have tilled him (Bezleel) with the spirit of God, in wis- 
dom, ... to devise cunning works," etc. (Ex. 
xxxi, 3), reference being had here to something more 
than even human skill. "And I will take of the 
spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them 
[the elders]; and they shall bear the burden- of the 
people with thee," etc. (Num. xi, 17); that is, the eld- 
ers should have their portion in the same divine gifts 
which Moses had. Joshua, also, was endowed by God 
with the requisite spiritual qualifications for the office 
which he filled (Num. xxvii, IS). The spirit of God 
also came upon Balaam, impelling him to prophecy in 



152 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

opposition to his natural inclinations (Num. xxiv, 2). 
The spirit, in the sense in which the term is here used, 
does not appear in the Pentateuch as affecting the work 
of purification in the heart of man; here the spirit is 
mainly an enlightening influence, and at the same time 
a testimony of God in regard to himself; sanctification 
being an outward formula illustrative of the required 
inward purity. This inward purity, as the product of 
the spirit of God, is first spoken of in the Psalms (see 
Psa. xli, 10-13, cxi, 3, 10), and in only two of 
these. But such references abound in the New Testa- 
ment. 

3. The condition of the human soul during the re- 
ception of div ine self revelation . 

a. The Dream (chalom). The influence of the spirit 
of God upon the soul extends to its sleeping state as 
well as to its waking state. Impressions through 
the various physical faculties being excluded from the 
soul during sleep, it becomes then only the more sus- 
ceptible to divine impressions. i ' The voice of the 
Lord God " can be more readily heard by man in the 
silence and solitude of the evening. The divine 
spirit whispers to the spirit of man, the sensuous and 
reflective faculties being asleep, producing dreams. 
God often communicated himself to man in this way, 
not only to his chosen mediums of revelation, but 
to Abimilech, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar and others as 
well. The dreams of revelation were different in their 
origin from the ordinary dreams produced by physical 
causes, and were distinguished from the latter by some- 
thing peculiar connected with them which impresse it- 
self upon the mind of the dreamer as divinely significant. 
It is possible, however, that the person may sometimes 



THE Mosaic PERIOD. 158 



have been so far mistaken as to the origin of his dream 
as to attach :i significance to it which it did not in real- 
ity have (Jcr. xxiii, V J7, iW; Deut. xiii, 5). 

1). The Vision (chazon and machazeh). The words 
ure from tin* same root, the former form not occurring 
in the Pentateuch. God made himself known to Abra- 
ham once in a vision (Gen. xv, 1) and also to Balaam 
(Num. xxiv, 4; see also Gen. xlvi, 2; Num. xii, ?>). 
From the paucity of references we may probably infer 
that God did not usually make himself known in vis- 
ions in those days. In the; vision the subject matter of 
the revelation was divinely present to the seer, and his 
reflective faculties seem to have been awake. It was 
a higher form of revelation than the dream. 

c. Tlx' immediate sight of Divinity, the waking 
vision or direct revelation of God to man, independent 
of dreams or sleeping vision. It is thought by some 
that the vision of (Jen. xv, 1, was of this kind, but 
this is not the most tenable view. This was the high- 
est form of revelation. 



( )hapteb III. 



THE MOSAIC DOCTRINE OF MAN. 

Definition. 

The Mosaic Anthropology is a systematic presenta- 
tion of the teachings of the Pentateuch concerning man. 
It deals with the subject mainly, though not exclu- 
sively, in its moral and spiritual aspects. The Gene- 
sis account itself suggests the two-fold division under 
which the contents of this chapter may be treated, viz: 



154 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

(1) Man as he was originally created; (2) Man as affected 
by sin. Although we do not know the exact date of 
the composition of Genesis, we must assume that the 
information which it furnishes us concerning the origin, 
nature and destination of man, appertains to the Mo- 
saic anthropology and not to that of a later period; and 
we must therefore also assume that this information 
was, in its essential elements, at least, in the possession 
of the Israelites of the Exodus. 

A. MAN AS ORIGINALLY CREATED. 

§ 1. His Origin. 

The Pentateuch knows nothing of any human race, 
except the Adamic, neither does any subsequent portion 
of the sacred Scriptures. The doctrine of autocthony 
as held by the Greeks, and perhaps some other ancient 
nations, is of extra biblical origin, the Adam of Gen- 
esis being the first father, not merely of some, but of 
all beings to whom may be applied the adjective hu- 
man. It did not occur to the Israelites to believe any 
other doctrine than this concerning the origin of man. 
It is this common descent of all men from one father 
that entitles man to be called a race. In Genesis, two 
accounts of man's origin are given. The second (ch. 
ii, 7,) must be referred to first in the order of our 
treatment. And Jehovah God formed man, or moulded 
him, as a potter does his clay, of the dust of the ground, 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
man became a living soul. It was not only an El, or 
one of the Elohim that did it, but it was the only one, 
the Elohim whom the Israelites had already come to 
know as Jehovah. Ho formed man's body of the dust 
of the ground, transmuting it into live flesh and bones 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 155 

by breathing into bis nostrils the breath of lives (ruach 
chayyim), thus causing him to become a living soul 
(nephesh chayya). His body existed before his soul 
existed, or, rather, that which became the human body 
exis-ted prior to the soul, for, Btrictly, it was not a hu- 
man body until it was animated l>v the indwelling of 
the soul, which resulted from the Divine inbreathing. 
The creation of man was a new and definite Divine 
act, distinct from all other creative acts. All other 
creatures of whom mention is made in (Jen. i, were 
called into being by the Divine word of power. "Let 
the earth bring forth." etc.; hut in the creation of man 
no such mighty command goes forth, hut instead a 
solemn word of deliberation and council precedes the 
creative act: '"We will make man,"' or, ''Let us make 
man." This points to the superior dignity of him who 
was about to he created. The language employed is 
highly anthropomorphic, and the word "form" (ii, 7) 
is the word used to designate the act of moulding by a 
potter; but we are not to understand, nor did the Is- 
raelites understand, that this Mosaic doctrine concern- 
ing man's origin is only another Promethean myth, in 
which Jehovah Klohim is represented as forming with 
his hands a lump of clay into a human form, and 
standing near it, breathing into it, as a man breathes, 
the breath of life. The Scripture nowhere warrants 
such a conclusion as this, such a passage as Job x. s . 
apparently to the contrary notwithstanding. God op- 
erated invisibly in the creation of man. as he did in 
the creation of other animals; that is. if there had been 
another human being in existence, he could not have 
witnessed God in the act, hut the act would have been 
cognizable by him only in it- result. Strictly -peak- 



156 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ing, the word "formed" is applicable only to human 
form; this was made out of previously existing mater- 
ial — the dust of the earth and those ingredients which 
compose it, as carbon, nitrogen, etc. But no previously 
existing material was transmuted into rationality. As 
a "living soul," in the sense in which he was a living 
soul, man was created, not made or in any way 
generated. But from the fact that the first man's body 
was formed by a distinct act out of previously existing 
material, it is not to be inferred that it was formed by 
another body being either gradually or suddenly trans- 
muted into a human body. When the dust ceased to 
be dust, the next form in which it existed was that of 
the human body. The same ingredients entered also 
into the composition of the bodies of the lower animals. 
They also were, directly or indirectly, of the dust; and 
each particular lower animal was also in some sense 
a living soul (nephesh chayya), the term being the same 
as that applied to man. But this does not so much 
betray a want of suitable descriptive phrases, on the 
part of the Hebrew language, to apply to the two cases 
respectively, as it teaches that even man, in respect to 
one aspect of his origin, was linked to lower nature; 
for only by being thus linked to it, could the lower 
physical and animal world find its answer and fulfill- 
ment in him. 

§2. Man in His Sexual Aspect. 

"Male and female created he them." (Gen. i, 27.) 
This statement anticipates the subsequent account of 
the creation of the female in-ch. ii, 21, 22. There were 
two acts in creation altogether distinct in point of 
time. First the male body was created out of the dust 



THE lfOSAIC PERIOD. 151 

of the ground, in such way as to render it decompos- 
able t«> * iii — t again. Then the female was formed out 

of a part of the man which could he spared without in- 
terfering with the harmony and integrity of the male 
body. It was no less a perfect body after the forma 
tion of the female than it was Defore. The male could 
perceive that the female was in all respects the conn 
terpaii of himself, her bones and flesh corresponding 
exactly to hi-, which he also perceived was not so in 
the case of any other creature. The phrase, "This now 
i> I) me of my hone." etc., implies that the idea of a 
helpmeet, or counterpart, or one who could afford him 
companionship, had already been present in his mind, 
l>ut that he had not found it in reality. "This now/' 
or "this at last," is the language of rest or satisfaction, 
after a search, the objeel sought for being found. 
The female, also, was therefore appropriately called 
Adam, a- both the male and female of the winged 
creatures, for example, were called fowl or bird. 
Bui the account distinguishes the sex of man 
above that of the lower animals, in that in the case of 
the latter no details are furnished in regard to the crea- 
tion of the male and female of the several species re 
spectivcly. We are told only the fact that God created 
them, the remarkable formula being used: "And Elo- 
him said. Let the earth bring forth." But we do not 
know whether all the lower animals of any one given 
species are the offspring of one original couple <>r not. 
But as the first man had evidently observed the pres 
ence of sex in the lower creation-, so he had evidently 
observed the absence of it in the case of himself; he felt 
that he was incomplete. This also, as well as the let 
ter of the narrative, would Beem to preclude us from 



158 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

believing that Adam was originally so constructed as 
to propagate his species in any such manner as the tree 
propagates itself by means of a bud. Eve was in no 
sense an afterthought of the Creator. Nor did the Is 
raelites believe, nor did Mosaic revelation teach that 
the first man was in any sense androgynous, involving, 
in some mysterious manner, both sexes in one person. 
The Mosaic doctrine does not admit of such construc- 
tion, nor was such the belief of the earliest contempo- 
raries of the Israelites in so far as the oldest inscrip- 
tions have made their belief known to us. But the 
opinion that man was created double did come into 
vogue, and has been held by many from remote times. 
It is a false exegesis, based originally, perhaps, on the 
separation in the Mosaic narrative of Gen. i, 27, from 
ch. ii, 7, though it is" more difficult to account for the 
belief in the case of remote heathen tribes.* 

The female counterpart of himself, of whose origin he 
was in some way made aware, Adam called woman 
(Ishsha)) because she was taken from man (Ish). 
Therefore, or in view of the manner and purpose of her 

*An old rabbinical interpretation says that Adam and Eve were 
forced back to back, united at the shoulders, and were hewn 
asunder, Eugubinus among Christian commentators, the Rabbis 
Samuel, Manasseh Ben- Israel, and Maimonides among the Jews, 
have given the weight of their opinion to support this interpre- 
tation [the double sex of Adam]. The Rabbi Jeremiah Ben- 
Eleazer, on the authority of the text: "Thou hast fashioned me 
behind and before" (Ps. cxxxix, 4 ) argued that Adam had two 
faces, one male and the other female and that he was of both 
sexes. The Rabbi Samuel Ben-Nahamanheld that the first man 
was created double, with a woman at his back, and that God 
cut them apart. "Adam," said other rabbis, "had two faces 
and one tail, and from the beginning he was both male and 
female — male on one side, female on the other; but afterward 
the parts were separated. An Indian tradition is to this effect: 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 150 

creation, says the inspired writer of Genesis, "Shall a 
man forsake his father and his mother, and shall cleave 
unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." According 
to Mosaism, therefore, though not according to the 
universal practice of the Mosaic and subsequent times, 
marriage is a divine institution and one of inviolable 
sanctity, one man being joined to one woman only, 
and for life. So it was in the divine intention, and SO 
the [sraelites knew it was to be, though many of them 
practiced polygamy. The animal was to be wholly 
subordinate to the rational and spiritual. The posses- 
sion of children was looked upon from the beginning, 
not as the mere result of animal pleasure, but as a 
divine blessing ((Jen. iv, 1, 25; xxix, 32, etc.), and un- 
fruitfulness as a divine curse, and in ancient Israel no 
trace "can be found of the custom of killing children 
to ward oil the increase of family cares, which i- SO 
widely spread in heathenism" (Odder). 

.^ .'). M<n> /n his Racial Aspect. 
The human male and female were not created at one 
and the same time, the latter being derived from the 

Whilst Brahma, the creator, was engaged in the production of 
beings, he saw Kaya (body) divide itself into two parts, of which 
each part was a different sex, and whence sprang the human 
race. According to a much more explicit version, Viradi, the 
first man, finding his solitude intolerable, fell into the deepesl 
sorrow; and, yearning for a companion, his nature developed 
into two sexes, united in one. Then he separated into two indi- 
viduals, but found in that separation unhappiness, for he was 
conscious of his imperfection ; then he reunited the existence of 
the two portions, and was happy, and from that union the world 
was peopled. In Persia, Meschia and Meschiane, the first man 
and the first woman were said to have formed originally but one 
body; but they were cut apart, and from this voluntary union all 
men are sprung. — Baring Gould' s Legends of the Patriarchs and 
Prophets. 



160 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

former by a second and distinct creative process. "As 
in the absolute One there is no duality, whether in sex 
or in any other respect, so is there none in the original 
form and constitution of man," so the natural unity of 
the first pair, and of the race descended from them, is 
established by the primary creation of an individual, 
from whom is derived by a second creative process, the 
first woman.* 

In this absolute unity of man lies the absolute 
unity of the race, every individual member of it, in- 
cluding even the first mother, having its unit and rep- 
resentative in the first man. Only human beings can, 
in the strictest sense, be said to constitute a race. The 
account of the creation of these is the account 
of the creation of first one human being and 
then another from him; from these two also other 
human beings descended by procreation. Such is the 
constant assumption of the Scriptures from the begin- 
ning onward, and such was the belief of the early Isra- 
elites. Only a subsequently developed national exclu- 
siveness could have a tendency to give rise to any 
other belief; and perhaps even this never became so in- 
tense in the case of the Israelites as to manifest itself 
in a denial that God " made of one blood all the na- 
tions of the earth," and that each member, or individ- 
ual, of the human kind was connected with every other 
as members of the same family, though the Israelites 
greatly misapprehended the Messianic relation in which 
they stood to other nations. 

But in the case of vegetables and the lower animals 
the substance of all that was said was, "And God said 
4 Let them be,' and they were;" and the further fact 

*See Murphy on Gen, ii, 21-25. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 161 

thai such a law was imposed upon each genus or species 

as to cause it to reproduce "after its kind" and in no 
other way. Hut whether there was more than one in- 
dividual, or one couple, of each distinct species created, 

we are not imformed. The distinction between man 

and the angels Is even more marked. There is no race 
of angels in any sense, hut only numerous individual 
angels, each one being the result of an entirely inde- 
pendent and distinct creative act.'"' 

They u neither marry nor are given in marriage," 
and consequently the word "hereditary" can in no 
sense hv used of them, and there is nothing equivalent 
to what wc call consanguinity, Unking one with an- 
other. Each angel represents only himself. Bach 
stands or falls for himself alone, involving no other to 
any extent, only in so far as another may come under 

*If the words of our Savior in Matt. xvii. 81, "This kind goeth 
not out but by prayer and fasting." refer to fallen angels, rather 
than to the disembodied spirits of dead and wicked men, he 
surely does not use the word kind, or species, in such a sense as 
to impl> that the word race is at all applicable to angelic beings, 
whether fallen or unfallen. There are doubtleas different 
classes, or orders, of angels, but they do not grow or reproduce 
themselves. They increase in numbers only as they are created 
by direct divine act, and the term species is applicable to them only 
as it is applicable to metal or tin. The word race is not always the 
equivalent of genus. Mere resemblances among things, or be- 
ings however numerous these resemblances may be, are not 
sufficient to constitute them a race. In order that they may be a 
race, the existence of the one must in some sense depend upon 
and spring from that ol another, and each term of the scries 
must be in the image and likeness of the preceding. As the 
horse species can by no sort of process be cau<c<l to produce the 
sheep species of animal, so also in so far as man was made in 
the image of God, he must have been a direct creation, for r" 
earthly creature existed in the image of God before him from 
whom he could have sprung. 



162 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the sway of his stronger moral influence. There is no 
brotherhood of angels. Only of the human kind can 
brotherhood be predicated; and "from this wide cir 
cumference Scripture never recedes. Even when it 
recounts the fortunes [or prescribes the mission, or pre- 
dicts the future] of a single individual, family, or na- 
tion, its eye and interest extend to the whole race; and 
it only dwells on the narrower circle of men and things 
as the potential spring of nascent, growing, and eter- 
nal life and blessing of the whole race" (Murphy). 

§ 4. In the Image of God. 

" And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness. ' "* 

*Or, "And Elohini said, 'We will make man/ " etc. I do not 
think that the plural expression "we will make" hints at any de- 
gree of polytheism within the sphere of revelation, or on the 
part of the writer of Genesis; nor does it contain a suggestion of 
the Trinity, or of the Divine Majesty. As in the case of the 
plural Elohim, so remote and vague a suggestion of the Trinity 
could have scarcely been distinguished during the early history 
of the Israelites from polytheism — the very error against which 
it was so earnestly desired to protect them — though they may 
have held with more or less clearness the doctrine of the Trinity. 
It may suggest the Trinity to us, but it could not have done so 
to the first readers of the passage, .and this latter is the main 
point. And as for the plural of majesty, or royal "we," aside 
from the fact that such a use of the pronoun is extremely rare in 
the Old Testament, and perhaps altogether unknown to the 
writer of Genesis, the pronoun "I," when God speaks, is vastly 
more royal than "we." How would it do to substitute "we" 
for "I" in this passage: "Where wast thou when I laid the 
foundations of the earth ? " and in other similar ones? It would 
not do at all. The expression under consideration is a question. 
If the author had been using the indirect style of discourse, 
he might have written, "And said that He would make man," 
using the singular instead of the plural verb. But he puts words 
into the mouth of God, still using the word Elohim in the sin- 



THE \f08A10 PERIOD. 168 

(Gen. i. 26). k 'S<> God created man [man essen- 
tially, as including both sexes] in his own Image, in 
the image of God, created he him" (Ver. 27). 

A& compared with the lower living creatures, the 
crowning and essential distinction of man is thai he 
was created in th<> image and likeness of God; as com- 
pared with the angels, his essential distinction being 
thai he was given a body and such facilities and prop- 
erties as were due to, or rendered necessary by, the in- 
dwelling therein of spirit and the image of God. Elim- 
inate from man this "image and likeness,' 1 and he 
would neither he sinless man nor sinful man, hut such 
a being as, so far as*we know, God has never created. 
Man is therefore, a duplex being, allied on the one 
Bide of his nature to God and the angels, and on the 
other to the physical and animal. When God created 
the plants and lower animals, he created them in "the 
image and likeness" of the ideas, or models, of each 
Bpecies respectively, which had been in his infinite 

^ular sense, as he had done in the preceding instances in this 
chapter Blohim, with him, is still one and the only one. I 
conceive that he quotes him here as saying "we will maXe," 
because in the revelation vision (whether real or poetical) Elohiin 
was represented to him as addressing the intelligent and holy 
beings whom he had already created. Doubtless these had wit 
nessed with great joy and expression of praise the creative acts 
just described, and now Elohim by way of loving concession, as 
a father to his children. s:iys to them: "We will now make man 
in the same image and likeness as you and I are. lie also shall 
be one of the sons of God." Nor does this view at all require 
that we should go to the extreme of ancient Jewish vagaries in 
regard to angelic CO operation with God in the work of creation, 
though it postulates the generally admitted fact that the exis 
tence of angelic beings was recognized in the earliest ages, even 
where there had been no direct supernatural revelation on the 
BUbject See niv article on Blohim in Gen. i, in " The Old Tes- 
tament Student," April. 1887. 



164 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

mind from eternity. But the model by which he cre- 
ated man was himself. Him he created in his own im- 
age, the word likeness being added merely for the sake 
of making the statement emphatic, as appears from its 
omission in verse 27, as well as from the difficulty that 
exegetes have in detecting any difference, except, per- 
haps, a very metaphysical one, between it and the word 
"image." If a distinction of meaning between the two 
words be insisted upon, we may suggest that "image" 
denotes the mould, or model which God had in his 
mind in forming man, while "likeness" denotes the re- 
semblance which man, on being formed, bore to that 
image, or to God. 

But what idea is intended to be conveyed by this 
figurative expression ? The answer is to be sought from 
Mosaism itself; and it immediately occurs to us that, 
so far at least as the human image of God is concerned, 
the Mosaic doctrine of God must be regarded as closely 
allied to the Mosaic doctrine of man. The Israelites, 
as we have seen, were both directly and indirectly for- 
bidden by the Mosaic teachings to have any material- 
istic conceptions of God whatever. They could 
scarcely, therefore, have regarded man as made in the 
image of God in respect to his material body or form. 
Yet some have presumed to infer from this human im- 
age of God "that God also has a bodily form like to 
man, which is related by way of prototype to the hu- 
man form." But this surely is not the interpretation 
which Mosaism puts upon its own teachings, nor has 
it at any time been the received view of the church.* 

*Audius, or Audaeus, a Syrian reformer of the fourth cen- 
tury, was the founder of a sect, embracing for a time a consider- 
able following, known as the Anthromorphites. He believed 
that God possessed, not a perfect human body, but a human 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. LOO 

But does not the Pentateuch and subsequent scriptures 

speak of :i "form" of ( rod, his hand-, eve-, etc. \ Ye>, 

but that the [sraelites themselves regarded such expres- 
sions as mere anthropomorphisms is evident from the 

Mosaic teachings concerning ( rod. Such modes of speech 
are not peculiar to men in an early stage of religious 
advancement, but are the common resort of all men in 
all times, when speaking of the Divine Being. Nor 
were the Israelites, as the very genius of their language 
indicates, sufficiently advanced in metaphysical specu- 
lation to interpret the words as teaching that God has 
an invisible, spiritual, bodily form of some sort, like 
unto which man was made. The human material body 
was not regarded as a copy of a Divine spiritual body. 
They did not think that God was really anthropomor- 
phic, though they may have thought of him as anthro- 
pomorphic. It is best to regard the passage as teach- 
ing, both ourselves and the Israelites, that God created 
man an intelligent, immortal, personal being, with 
-powers of thought, and possessed of a sinless moral 
nature, and capable of exercising dominion. Man could 
recognize himself as differing, in these respects, from 

shape, and, of course, » the form of human limbs; and that the 
fashion of the human body was copied from the Divine shape, 
to which the Scriptnral term, image of Qod, is to be referred. 
Tertullian, before him, holding that soul and spirit are the same, 
had used the following language: "The soul, therefore, is em 
with a body; for if it were not corporeal, it could not desert the 
body." ( Treatise on the Soul, ch. v.) "We, on our part. how< 
do here maintain, and in a Bpecial treatise on the subject prove, 
that soul is corporeal, possessing a peculiar kind of solidity in 
its nature. <uch as enables it both to perceive and Buffer." (On 
the Res. of the Flesh, ch. xvii.) "For who will deny that God is 
a body, although God Ifl a spirit? For spirit has a bodily sub- 
stance of its own kind, in its own form." (Againtt Prazcas, ch. 
vii.) 



166 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

all the living creatures around him. He and the an- 
gels were the sons of God, because they were like him, 
being created in his image; and hence he and they 
alone were capable of receiving revelations from him. 
In harmony with this greater dignity of his nature, is 
the greater nobility of man's bodily form, it being the 
only one in which God has ever manifested himself to 
man. Divinity as resident in the body of one of the 
lower animals is a conception of the grossest heathen- 
ism, and one which Mosaism could not tolerate. 

§5. The Names Adam and Ish. 

So far at least as the name is concerned, no certain 
light is shed upon the Old Testament doctrine of man. 
u Adam" does not seem to have been the first name which 
man bore. The first instance in which the man ap- 
plies any name to himself at all is in Gen. ii, 23, where 
he speaks of himself in contradistinction from her who 
had been created from him to be his companion, here 
calling himself Ish and the woman Ishsha. As com- 
pared with other names applied to him, the term Ish 
designates him as distinguished from woman, and as 
related to woman. At least this seems to be the opin- 
ion of the Hebrew lexicographers; though if the word 
has this meaning as well as this designation, it implies 
that man in the very name by which he knew himself 
was furnished a prophecy of his coming counterpart, 
for he could not know himself as male or as husband 
without knowing another as female or as wife. But 
after all, this is only a sense which came to be attached 
to the word Ish (or its equivalent in the language of 
the first man), on account of Adam's saying on the cre- 
ation of woman. It embodies no hint of Adam's in- 



THE \fOSAlC PERIOD. 167 

completeness as a being; it offers no prophecy to him 
concerning the creation of her in whom he should find 

completion. Adam knew the name before the woman 
was made, hut it looks from him backward, and not 
from him forward. lie was called Ish, not because of 
his sex, but because he was nature's nobleman, the 
crowning act of God's creative work, the one to whom, 
by reason of the qualities with which he was endowed. 
God could delegate authority and dominion over 
"every living thing that moveth upon the face of the 
earth. " Man called woman Ishsha because he saw r she 
was like himself, and the only created being in whom 
he could find companionship. But we do not know 
when the term Adam (adham) was first applied toman 
'And God said, 'Let us make man/ Here the word 
used is adham. 

But it is most reasonable to suppose that the inspired 
writer merely intends to present the Creator as using 
the term in a general sense, signifying nothing more 
than that he would now make the first father of that 
race, which in our day is called Adam, or man. God 
gave the first man no name, leaving him to name him- 
self, as he named the other living creatures. When, 
and by whom, and for what reason, the term Adam, or 
its more ancient lexical equivalent, was first applied to 
him, we do not know. Various theories have been 
proposed concerning the origin and meaning of the 
word. The younger Delitzsch thinks he has found it 
in an Assyrian root, and says that it means "the be- 
gotten one/' or "the created one." Knoble and others 
derive it from an Ethiopian root, according to which 

man was called A</<nn because he was comely of form. 
Others, Still, derive the name from rlnn, blood, holding 



168 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

that man was first so called because of his red, or ruddy 
complexion. The common view makes the word sig- 
nify "the earth-born," the one who was made of the 
dust of the ground, with the added thought that he 
must also return to it, a name, therefore, significant of 
sorrow and lowliness. According to this opinion the 
name was applied to man in view of what he became 
after the fall, and has reference to his mortality rather 
than to his origin. The elder Delitzsch holds that the 
word denotes one who was made from the ground, but 
that the point of significance in the name is, not that 
man is therefore lowly and mortal, but that one made 
from the ground should ever be so honored as to be en- 
dowed with the image of God. But it is by no means 
probable that such is the reason why the Pentateuch 
and the Scriptures generally, call man by the name 
Adam. Here and there the inspired writers and 
teachers doubtless use the term in a specially signifi- 
cant sense, but for the most part it was used by them 
as it was used in the every-day speech of the people, 
simply to designate a being or class of beings, without 
attaching any etymological significance to it whatever. 
And least of all is it probable that he was called Adam 
by way of contrasting his earthly origin with the Di- 
vine image in which he was created. If there is any 
Hebrew term at all which denominates man according 
to his more exalted dignity as an intelligent, moral 
being, made in the image of God, and thus distin- 
guished from all other earthly creatures, that term 
would seem to be ish. Whenever in the Old Testa- 
ment a special word is wanted to designate man in this 
aspect of his nature, ish is the one used; and in rela- 
tion to the female only ish, or man as ish, could be- 



TUB MOSAIC PERIOD. 100 

come a husband, a term which is never applicable to 

the lower animals. "And Adam 'knew' his wife;" the 
term "knew" which is invariably used in such connec 
tions as this being doubtless significant of the fact that 
the sexual relation between man, ish, and woman as 
ishsha, is something higher than the mere animal grati- 
fication which obtains between the two sexes of the 
lower living creatures. The term Adam might be ap- 
plied to man before the fall, but only in a general 
sense, or only as a name distinguishing him generically 
from other creatures; whereas the word ish su££:ests not 
only a difference between him and other creatures, but 
also his intellectual and moral superiority over the lat- 
ter. But man's form is to be regarded as in no sense 
the basis of his nobler name, except in so far as the 
form is the outward expression and embodiment of the 
nobler. Adam named the lower animals according to 
his impressions of them (Gen. ii, 19). He named him- 
self also, and the term which he would apply to him- 
self would doubtless be expressive not merely of a dif- 
ference between himself and other animals, but of a 
crowning difference, of that higher nature in him which 
made him essentially more than the animal, and 
essentially above the animal. The word adam 
may have any one of the meanings above men 
tioned. but on none of these accounts did he give name 
to himself. The time was not yet come for him to 
apply any term to himself that would suggest to him the 
lowliness of his origin, or the sorrows and sufferings of 
life. He did not name his body, and only his body 
was formed from the dust. By whatever name he 
called himself, whether ish, or the term of which ish is 
the Hebrew representative, he doubtless named him 



170 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

self in reference to his higher nature, and the name 
clung to him as did also the higher nature, notwith- 
standing the wreck which sin ere long made of it. He 
was always something more than an animated body, 
and always more than an animal. 

§6. Body, Soul, Spirit. 

The language of the Scriptures is not the language 
of philosophy, nor were the Israelites a philosophical 
people. If during any period of their national history 
they had anything partaking of the nature of a well 
developed Psychology it has not come down to us. 
The divine revelation which was given to them, and 
through them to us, is not a revelation of psychologi- 
cal, or other scientific facts, only in so far as these per- 
tain to its great theme, which is the Divine purpose of 
redemption. Its rule in regard to matters of science, 
as distinguished from matters of religion, is simply to 
give us the theories of the day, in so far as suited to its 
purpose, without entering into the question of their 
accuracy 

In view even of these considerations, we are already 
prepared to believe that neither the Pentateuch nor any 
subsequent part of the Old Testament presents any 
theory of its own concerning the psychological consti- 
tution of man's nature. It speaks of man; God reveals 
himself to man/ man dies: man sinned; man should be 
holy. It uses the terms flesh (basar), soul (nephesh), 
and spirit (ruach); but it is man's body, man's soul, 
and man's spirit. It nowhere teaches the doctrine of 
trichotomy. It speaks in harmony with the common 
consciousness of man, which to him is also a revela- 
tion itself, and the necessary postulate and basis of all 






TBS Mosaic PERIOD. 171 



cilicr revelations. And human consciousness knows 
only two substances, matter tfnd that which is not mat- 
ter; or, spirit and thai which is not spirit. The Scrip- 
tures, both of the Old and New Testaments, use the 
terms soul and spirit in their popular sense, just as 
they are used by ourselves. The Scriptures do not 
dogmatize here; and if the Israelites speculated on the 
subject at all, beyond the simple testimony of the indi- 
vidual consciousness, it is quite likely that they 
differed among themselves, as scholars do in these 
days. But their differences are not a part of the 
Bible. The Bible commits itself to no theory; 
and a strictly scientific Biblical Psychology is not a 
possibility, only in so far as it is possible to ascertain 
the Scriptural sense of certain terms. It has been un- 
duly sought to reduce the above mentioned and certain 
kindred terms to scientific technicalities, whereas they 
are the words only of popular speech, and popular 
speech antedates science and also outlasts it. Many a 
man recognizes the existence of the two words sotd 
and a-/, //■//, and has constant occasion to use them who 
never thinks of the soul and spirit as being two distinct 
substances, and each distinct from matter. So doesthe 
Bible use these terms, and so did the Israelites. If a 
person should write a history of England, however 
useful and accurate it might be, it would not be preju- 
dicial to the character of his book as history, to say 
that it would be impossible to construct the various 
psychological terms found in the book into dogmatic 
psychological formula'. Nevertheless, more or less 
definite theories of trichotomy have, it is thought by 
their advocates, been found in the .Scriptures, and even 
in the Pentateuch. The one which has been more 



172 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

commonly adopted than any other, and which is also 
the simplest and most intelligible, is that the body is 
the material part of man's constitution, while the soul 
(nephesh) is the principle of animal life, or that which 
distinguishes his life as an animal from mere plant life. 
The spirit (ruach) is that in man which reasons, wills, 
is immortal, of which moral character can be predi- 
cated, in short, that higher nature or entity of man 
which distinguishes him from the mere animals. It is 
that m which the image of God inheres. 

The immaterial elements of man's nature which he 
possesses in common with the brutes, constitute soul. 
The immaterial, }^et essentially different, elements of 
his nature, which he has in common with the angels, 
but which brutes do not possess, is spirit. This analy- 
sis of man's nature is in some sense correct, for he ob- 
viously does possess something besides the material 
body, in common with the lower animals, and he also 
possesses something only in common with the angelic 
beings; but so far as the usus loquendi of the terms 
soul and spirit (or nephesh and ruach) is concerned the 
theory is not Scriptural, nor is it to be regarded as 
anti-Scriptural. 

A second phase of the trichotomistic theory denies 
that the soul is that which man possesses in common 
with the brutes, and yet affirms that it is different from 
spirit. It is a third substance which originates not 
from the body and which pertains not to the body, but 
is produced by the spirit and pertains to it. The spirit 
is light (so to speak), while the soul is the effulgence or 
quality of luminosity which belongs to the light. The 
soul is related to the spirit as life is to the principle of 
life. It is the life principle that produces life; it is the 



THE MOSAIC P ER1 OD. 17:; 



spirit which produces soul. Spirit is the cause, soul is 
the effect Soul does not belong to the body — or 
flesh — side of man's nature, but it is the mediating 

link of the spirit and the body; the form in which the 
personality of the spirit expresses itself. God breathed 
into man the 4 spirit, and the spirit takes hold on the 
flesh as bouI, and as such manifests Itself. If man 
had no spirit he could have no soul.* 

A third phase of trichotomy holds that the soul is 
the remit of the union between spirit and flesh, and is 
hence different from both, as water differs from both 
hydrogen and oxygen, of which it Is the combination. 
This seems to be the view of Oehler. As In general 
soul (nephesh) originates in the flesh (basar) by the 
union of spirit with matter, so is the soul the result of 
the inbreathing of spirit by the Creator into the mater- 
ial frame of the human body. Man is soul but has 
Spirit. The soul thinks, loves, etc., while the impulse 
to act precedes from the spirit. And yet, according to 
Oehler the soul and spirit arc not co-ordinate elements 
of man's constitution. The two original elements are 

Spirit and flesh, or body, the soul, which is the c(nni'>>. 

situm, or result of the union, being of the same nature 
as the spirit. + 

But the Scriptures do not seem to me to teach any 
such metaphysical psychology, neither directly nor by 
legitimate inferences, and least of all are wetosuppose 
that such views fairly represent eitherthe average or 
the advanced [sraelifce. Man has even more than three 
faculties and there are three sides, or aspects, to his 
being, a material, an animal and a rational or divine; 

*See Delitzsch's Biblical Psychology, ii, Sec. iv. 
fSee Oehler's Old Testament Theology. 



174 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

but he is not composed of three substances. These 
facts an inspired teacher was not needed to make 
known. Apart from his body he is a unit; and soul 
(nephesh), and spirit (ruach) are very often used inter- 
changeably, and without apparent preference, even 
when applied to man. But even in these instances the 
two terms are not synonyms. The Scripture has use 
for both, even as we still have use for both, and for 
the very reason that while the immaterial nature of 
man is one and indivisible, it may, and often must, be 
regarded as having two sides or aspects. On the one 
hand he has the animating principle, the vital, moving 
sensitive body which the lower animals also have. In 
this respect he differs both from the plants and from 
the angels, for the one have not the animating and sen- 
tient principle and the others have not bodies. In this 
sense man is a soul; and if the Scriptures had occasion 
to use the term more particularly applicable to this 
side of his nature, it would prefer the word soul (nep- 
hesh or psuche); but plants and angels are never called 
souls. On the other hand, man is also a moral and 
rational being; and if it were desired to emphasize this 
side of his nature, the more appropriate term would 
perhaps be spirit (ruach or pneuma). But the Script- 
ures do not nicely discriminate between the two words. 
It applies both to animals and to man. This of itself 
would seem to definitely oppose any trichotomistic 
view of man's nature so far as any argument based 
upon Scripture usage of certain terms is concerned. 
For if man is a triplex being, having body, soul, and 
spirit, three distinct essences or substances, so also is 
the brute, for each of the three terms is also applied to 
the brutes in the Scriptures. The soul of man and the 



THE MOSAIC PERU)!). 175 

spirit of man arc the same thing essentially; his soul 
being simply the spirit existing under certain condi- 
tions. If we knew all the conditions under which the 
angels exist we might have occasion to call them by 
another name than spirits. The lower animal has a 
Bpirit, and the peculiarity of condition under which it 
is placed constitutes that spirit a soul. The spirit in 
one man is essentially the same as the spirit of another 
man. But the spirit of a man is essentially a diffi rent 
spirit from that of the brute, and it is also differently 
environed, and as the soul of the brute is only the 
spirit of the brute existing under its peculiar condi- 
tions, it follows of course that soul of man and the soul 
of the brute are different both in essense and in proper- 
ties. The one is rational, immortal, created in the im- 
age of God, while the other is not; while at the same 
time there are some things which may be, and actually 
are, common to both. 

B. MAN AS AFFECTED BY SIN. 

§1. The Pro! ><it 'ma and Full. 

Jehovah God, having created man, and from him the 
woman, placed them in the Garden of Eden, or of 
Pleasantness, not for the purpose of living there in 
luxurious idleness, but to dress it and to keep it. Had 
he fulfilled this part of his mission, the whole earth 
might ultimately, as the race multiplied, have be- 
come a garden of Pleasantness. Put, though the 
first human pair were created sinless, they were not 
in the strict sense holy. Mere innocence, or sinless 
Q688, is not holiness; the one being a negative term, 
implying the mere absence of something, while the 



176 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

other is a positive term, denoting the presence or 
possession of something. Holiness implies sinlessness, 
but sinlessness does not imply holiness. Strictly 
speaking, holiness on the part of moral beings, other 
than God, is something to be attained, and implies 
the putting forth of a volition, or choice, to that end. 
This the first pair were capable of doing, but had as 
yet no occasion to do. They were also in a state of 
harmony with nature, and hence to labor, or dress 
the garden and keep it, was not to toil and struggle. 
To exercise dominion over nature implied neither op- 
position on nature's part, nor violence on theirs. They 
were also in a state of conditional exemption from 
death. It was possible for him not to die; it mignt 
become possible for him to die. In the former case 
he might have been transfigured and translated. 

But the very fact that man was created a rational 
and free moral being, implied that he must have in 
him the capability of choice. There can be no vir- 
tue when there is no choice. There can be no choice 
when there is nothing to chose. Hence a test was 
inevitable. The imposition upon man of a test was 
only the necessary Divine process or method, whereby 
God made man a being of whom virtue or holiness 
might be predicated. This test is already implied in 
the fact that he was created in the Divine image. 
The Israelitish conception of the test of which we have 
an inspired account in Gen. ii, 17, was that of a pro- 
hibitory command. So, indeed, in the very nature 
of the case, it must have been. The conviction was 
divinely communicated to him in the very constitution 
of his moral nature, that some things he might do, 
a nd other things he might not do with impunity. 



TEE MOSAIC PERIOD. 177 

His moral nature was not created, and this convic- 
tion communicated to it afterward, but the conviction 
was an essential part, or constituent of the moral 
nature. This conviction only needed to have, and 
sooner or later must necessarily have had, a definite 
case in point, so to speak, on which to he exerc; 
by man's free volition. The pictorial, yet inspired, 
Mosaic account represents this case in point as being 
a tree of the knowledge, or tree of the choice of good 
and evil, and a prohibition to eat of its fruit. Had 
the prohibition to murder been the first test imposed, 
it would obviously have been both impracticable and 
unsuitable; impracticable because there was no one for 
him to murder, for instance, and unsuitable because it 
furnished no appeal to the first man's sinless nature, 
which could in any sense be called a test. But the 
time would come when both this and many other 
commandments would be both practicable and needed 
prohibitions. But for the present man's conviction of 
righl and wrong, in general, musl be divinely directed 
to something in particular, and that something must 
lie within the sphere 1 of man's action; and it would 
seem thai it must also be of such a nature as to teach 
man, at the outset, that the standard of right and 
wrong must for him be simply the will of God. These 
appear tO be at least Some Of the truths which lie be- 
tween the lines of Gen. ii, 10, 17. There may have 
been a real "tree of the knowledge" of good and evil," 
and its ripe fruit may have fallen off from day to 
day and decayed. Bui the deepest and truest 
loyalty to the Bible does not require us to be- 
lieve that it was necessarily a literal material tree. 

The Hebrews were characteristically Inclined to piclor- 



178 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ial rather than abstract representation of truths, and 
Jehovah, in communicating to them his revelations, 
could and did employ such forms as were best suited 
to their natural genius and modes of conception. Be- 
hind the plain, simple and altogether unaffected and 
concrete style of the story, lie the spiritual facts in the 
case, and these facts were what the Israelites saw in 
the story, though perhaps not with such clear vision as 
we may see them. 

1. Aside from the view of the moral constitution of 
man's nature, already referred to, the pictorial narra- 
tive under consideration discloses that side by side with 
a sinless spirit world, of which the Israelites were 
made cognizant, there already existed, before man was 
created, a great kingdom of evil powers and intelligences 
in the heavens, or outside of the natural sphere of 
man, presided over by a master spirit, who stood in 
antagonism to God. 

From this master evil spirit came the motive, or sug- 
gestion, to man of a volitioD in opposition to the will 
of God, and which actually resulted in all the darkness 
of human experience and human story, and which has 
ever been alike perplexing to Hebrew, heathen and 
Christian morality.* 

2. The narrative also discloses, not only a fact upon 
which a supernatural revelation placed its endorsement, 
but one which was currently accepted by the ancient 

*In the later Jewish theology "the fall of Adam is ascribed to 
the envy of the angels — not the fallen ones, for none were fallen 
till God cast them down, in consequence of their seduction of 
man. The angels, having in vain tried to prevent the creation of 
man, at last conspired to lead him into sin, as the only means of 
his ruin — the task being undertaken by Sammael (and his an- 
gels), who in many respects were superior to the other angelic 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 179 

Israelites, that man was not made as they then knew 
him, and as we now know him, but began his 
existence in a state of perfect harmony with his 
God, and with the recognition of the fact that 
His will was to be the standard of his conduct 
and that continued conformity thereto was the con- 
dition upon which this harmony was to be main- 
tained. This fact necessarily in its negative or prohibi- 
tory form, is veiled in the narrative, under the symbol. 
or pictoral representation of the tree of the knowledge 
oi good and evil, of the fruit of which they were for- 
bidden to eat. Any violation on his part of any pro- 
hibition of God would necessarily destroy his harmony 
with God, throw him into a state of positive discord 
with Him, and place him in communion with the king- 
dom of evil. The fact suggested the form of the in- 
spired narrative, and the inspired narration was the 
embodiment of the fact already painfully known. It 
was also known that the temptation to disobey, what- 
ever the specific prohibition may have been, overcame 
man, a belief sanctioned by supernatural revelation, 
with the further fact that it was done by means of the 
ait of a personal source of evil, extraneous to him 
self. 

3. This personal source of evil is represented in the 
narrative as a serpent. This, too. is the pictorial rep- 
resentation of a fact. It is not to be supposed that 
the [sraelites believed that a literal serpent, of what- 

princes. The instrument employed was the serpent, of whose 
original condition the strangest legends are told, probably to 
make the biblical narrative appear more natural." — Edershi 
"Life and Time* of Jesus." But this was not the doctrine of 
Mosaism, nor of the Israelii)-; of Moses' time. It is only a Bped. 
men of the haggadic exegesis of the Rabbis. 



180 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ever sort, entwined itself about the tree, and held lit- 
eral converse with Eve. The form of the narrative is 
only another way of saying that the temptation came 
from a personal evil being that was already in antag- 
onism with God, and that it was presented in a cun- 
ning guise, best calculated to accomplish the end aimed 
at. This is the only essential fact set forth in this part 
of the narrative, and the only one which the Great 
Revealer thought it necessary for us to know. The 
supposed fact that the Israeli tish doctrine of a personal 
Satan was not elaborated until long after the time of 
Moses, or that there are in the Pentateuch no express 
allusions to a personal Satan, does not at all forbid us 
to say that the serpent of the narrative is only another 
name for their personal Satan. This doctrine may 
have been, and doubtless was, conspicuously present 
in the popular Israelitish mind, as it was in the case of 
the nations about them, and yet the inspired writer 
may, for good reasons, have suppressed all direct al- 
lusions to it in the Pentateuchal writings. It was in- 
cumbent upon him to employ the language of his day, 
and perhaps he could not speak more plainly in this 
case without seeming to identify the tempter of man 
with one of the so-called evil gods of the nations — and 
this he did not wish to do, for the Israelites were al- 
ready exhibiting too marked a tendency in the direc- 
tion of heathenish demonology. Or perhaps the 
tempter is here presented as a serpent in order that the 
parts of the narrative may harmonize throughout. If 
one of its facts or truths is to be embodied in picture, 
so, consistently, must the others. Nor does it fall 
within the scope of the Pentateuch, nor, indeed, of the 
whole Old Testament, to present a fully developed 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 181 

Satanology. After Btatigg the essentia] facts of man's 
origin and fall, its object is to treat of God and man. 

and their relations to each other, and not the mysteries 
of the Bpiril world. Man knew enough for the present 
concerning this. Silence i> not necessarily to he con- 
strued as ignorance. Revelation, as a whole, i 
growth, but this fact does not require us to believe that 
the silences of revelation at any given period, on any 
given topics, imply that there are no allusions to these 
topics, or that the people had no theories concerning 
them, however incorrect. 

4. We may Inquire, hut only briefly here, of what 
spiritual truth was the Tree of Life, of the narrative 
intended to he BUggestive? for it Is evident that a cor 
responding truth in the history both of Adam and the 
Israelites underlay this part also of the physical im- 
agery. As it Was not to be supposed that the Tree of 
the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a literal tree 
the eating of whose fruit resulted in the death of the 
body by poison; so neither is the Tree of Life to be re 
garded as a literal tree, the eating of whose fruit would 
result in physical immortality which could not be for- 

*Pr. Samuel Davidson among oth jb: 'Those who sup- 

pose that the Devil employed tie serpent as his instrument, or 
that the Devil alone is spoken of. are confronted by the 
that the idea of Satan was of later introduction among the lie 
brews than the age of the writer [of the narrative of the fall). 
The curse pronounced upon the tempt ( r sufficiently sh< PTS that 
none but the agent expressly named [the liter at] was 

thought of." (Article Adam, Ency. Brit.) To this it may he 
briefly replied that, we may perhaps safely admit, so far as the 
Scripture requirements are concerned, that the Devil did not 
employ a literal serpent as his agent, hut that the serpent i< in- 
troduced into the narrative in order topictoriallyrepresenl what 
the Devil actually did do. That the idea of Satan, however, was 



182 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

feited. As the spiritual fact of disobedience and its 
baleful consequences is represented by the physical 
fact of eating a certain forbidden fruit, so the spiritual 
fact of obedience and its consequences is represented 
by the inspired writer under the physical imagery of 
another Tree called the Tree of Life. Adam might 
have found immortality in his sinless state by obedi- 
ence. Having disobeyed, however, in one instance, 
concerning which he had had explicit direction and 
warning, this Tree of Life was no longer accessible to 
him. Guilt and discord in his relation to his Maker 
have taken the place in him of the former harmony and 
peace; and this guilt and discord are a sword of flame, 
forever preventing him from returning to the old para- 
disical state of peaceful sinlessness, and securing im- 
mortality therein by the old path of obedience. He 
who by his own act throws himself out of harmony 
with God, in that very act is expelled, or rather ex- 
pels himself from Paradise. Here the narrative pauses, 
for the time had not yet come to give more than a 
brief and vague suggestion (Gen. iii, 15) of how the 
lost harmony and the forfeited immortality might still 
be secured by that "new and living way," who was also 

of later introduction than the age of the writer, is an assump- 
tion which cannot be proved. On the contrary, the earliest 
Shemitic peoples of which the monumental records inform us, 
including the Egyptians, among whom the Hebrews lived, were 
in possession of a well defined idea of evil spirits, and of an 
Evil One, who outranked the others; though the satanology of 
Christian theology, or even of the later Jewish theology, may not 
have been known to the early Hebrews. And as to the "time 
of the writer" of the Pentateuch narrative, that would seem to 
be too uncertain a matter in the estimation of the school of 
which Dr. Davidson was an able representative, to render it of 
any moment as the basis of argument. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD 183 

the Truth and the Life. To him t hat overcometh will 
I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the midst 
of the Paradise of God I Rev. ii, 7). As the history of 

redemption opens with Paradise Lost and immortality 
forfeited, so it closes with Paradise found and immor- 
tality secured irrevocably. 

§2. Sin. 

The historical origin of sin is, as we have seen, pre- 
sented m the narrative of the fall. Its metaphysical 
origin and nature are left untouched in that narrative, 
and in the main in all other parts of the Scriptures — 
and this, we may say as we pass, is evidence that the 
Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are not 
merely one of "the sacred hooks of the East," all of 
which are alike inspired, or alike uninspired. If the 
Israelites speculated on the metaphysical origin and na- 
ture of sin, as they probably did to some extent, as all 
races of men have done with Greater or less degree of 
acuteness, we have in the inspired writings neither 
record or endorsement, nor correction, of their specu- 
lations. The most that is here revealed, and the most 
that has ever Deeded to be revealed, concerning sin in 
its more metaphysical aspects, is, that it is that which 
— not only that mysterious and otherwise nameless 
something which is opposed to the will and holiness of 
God, hut it is also that in which this opposition origi- 
nates. The Divine Being is the absolute standard l>oth 
as to sovereignty and moral character; and that which 
doc- not conform to this standard, or which prevents 
conformity in others, is sin. This non-conformity to 
the standard ma v he considered either as Definitive or 
positive. It may be regarded, on the one hand, merely 



184 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

as a not-being and not-doing that which the holy will 
of God requires; and sometimes it is this, and nothing 
more. Or, on the other hand, it may consist in being 
and doing that which the holy will of God forbids. 
But Adam at the outset was already that which the 
holy will of God required him to be, and hence the 
probational test was appropriately, if not necessarily, a 
prohibition, or negative command. 

All that the Pentateuch reveals to us concerning the 
metaphysical origin of sin is that it originated in a 
source extraneous to man himself, and that this source 
was a personal being other than God. Man was 
already in a perfect state of harmony with God, having 
been so made by God himself. He could not be crea- 
ted over again into something that was sinful, or out 
of harmony with God. His natural tendency was to 
remain in the state in which he was created, and he 
would ever have continued in this state had he not 
been thrown out by a force extraneous to that element 
of himself of which moral character may be predicated; 
and this in turn could be accomplished, not by causing 
him to fail to obey a positive command, but only by 
inducing in,- him a positive act of disobedience to a 
prohibition. 

Before sin can exist as an act, before it can exist 
even as a state of corruption, it must already exist as 
a kind of potentiality which is the basis of the act 
which results in corruption, the corruption in turn re- 
sulting in other sinful acts. That which is holy cannot 
become unholy, at least not of itself. Holiness may do 
wrong, but it cannot sin ; it cannot commit a sinful 
act, and by reason of the reactionary effect upon itself 
be transmuted into unholiness. But innocence may 



I UK MOSAIC PERIOD. 185 

become guilt, especially if it be endowed with the dan- 
gerous attribute of free-will. But guilt is simply Bin 

in its relation to the Divine will, while moral pollution 
is Bin in its relation to the Divine holiness. Innoeenee 
endowed with free-will is, then, the mysterious poten- 
tiality through which sin, which existed before only as 
an idea, became actual. In itself, this potentiality, of 
course, possesses no moral quality, because it i- not a 
person, and moral quality can be strictly predicated 
only of persons. Sin at first, then. BO far as man or 
angel is concerned, is only a defect, consisting in the 
fact that an innocent moral nature could not be en- 
dowed with free-will without rendering sin, in its real 
and positive aspects. :i possibility. And yet this nega- 
tive sin is not BUCh a defect as must necessarily in pro- 
cess of time develop into something more than a de- 
feet. God made a perfect universe, including perfect 
angels and a perfect man. But their perfection was 
only relative. God being the Standard, they were 
imperfect, for he could make nothing as perfect as 
him8elf. The most that the nature of the case admit- 
ted of was an image and likeness of himself, which fell 
far below the original. We may predicate the two 
statements of God which are mutually contradictory, 
viz., he is absolutely free, and yet that it is impossible 
for him to sin. But we can predicate these two state- 
ments of neither man nor angel. The most that can 
be said of these is, that in the first instance, they were 
without Bin, and. being endowed with free-wills, they 
might or might not progress from negative sinlessness 
to positive holiness. 

But the first human pair, as we have Been, moved in 
the opposite direction — that is, from negative sinless- - 



186 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ness to positive sinfulness, both as to inward state and 
outward act. Sin ceased, with man, to be a mere pos- 
sibility; it became a permanent affection of his inward 
being, a state of discord with God, the ultimate stand- 
ard of holiness and right, and this inward condition 
man manifested outwardly by both doing what God 
had forbidden and failing to do what He had com- 
manded. The Israelites of the Mosaic period recog- 
nized sin in these two aspects, and they also recognized 
the inward as being the source of the outward, though 
it was reserved for Prophetism and the teachings of 
Christ in the Gospels to lay special emphasis on this 
latter fact. But in the Old Testament twelve different 
words are used to denote sin in its several phases, 
while at least eleven of these are found in the Penta- 
teuch. Some of these present sin as an inward state 
of moral perversity, or destitution of worth, or ruin, 
or sorrow and misery, etc., while others present it as 
an act of perversity, or treachery, or revolt, or staying 
from God, etc. The fact stated in Gen. viii, 21 , that 
"the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth," 
was ever recognized as true, witnessed as it was 
both by supernatural revelation and the testimony of 
the human religious consciousness. The very fact that 
the Israelites apprehended, to some extent at least, the 
terms in which the supernatural revelation of any given 
truths was expressed, is evidence that there was in the 
people a basal element of knowledge to begin with; 
and, on the other hand, the fact that the religious and 
theological conceptions of the Israelites were so far in 
advance of those of adjacent peoples is evidence that 
the Israelites had something more than the mere out- 
growth of a religious consciousness. 



THE MOB I/O PERIOD. 187 



§ 3. Death, 

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, 
thou shah not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest 
thereof thou shall surely die." Gen. ii, 17. 4k In the 
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return 
unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust 
thou art, and unto dusl -halt thou return." (ien. in, 
19. These are the basal texts. The thou in this pa- 
sage was the physical Adam— man's body; so, at least 
in the primary and natural sense at least, and so 
Adam's posterity understood it. "And he died," is the 
epitaph of all the generations. The soul, or spirit, was 
not of the dust, and to the dust it could not return. 
We cannot know whether Adam fully understood the 
import of the word "death." Perhaps he only knew 
that it meant something bad, or evil, just as he knew 
that the promise in hi, \Z, meant something good. In 
either case, if he knew more, the greater knowledge 
was due to further supernatural revelation which the 
author of the account did not record. But as for his 
posterity, they did not first : speak of the death of the 
soul, or spirit, or death in what we now call the figur- 
ative or spiritual sense, and then afterward transfer the 
word to the sphere of the physical. If this were true, 
physical death would be figurative death, and spiritual 
death would be the literal. But men do not reason from 
the spiritual to the material, but from the material to 
the spiritual. Breath, or spiritus, is not so called be- 
cause if resembles spirit, but spirit is so called because 
it resembles breath, or spiritus. Men talked of physi- 
cal death, and then by figure of speech afterward trans- 
formed the word to the sphere of the spiritual; and in 



188 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



the physical sense the word is used uniformly not only 
in the Pentateuch, but in the subsequent parts of the 
Old Testament. To die was to put the body back into 
the condition in which it was before God breathed into 
man the breath of life, and he became a living soul, 
thence further back still by a process of material dis- 
solution and decay to original dust. This is the first 
and obvious meaning of the word, and it is the only 
sense in which the word was used by the Israelites. 
Literal death cannot be predicated of spirit, for spirit 
exists only in so far as it lives. It may become more 
and more vital, it may develop along the line of its es- 
sential powers or attributes, but it cannot die, only in 
the sense of being annihilated. If left to itself, it 
would exist, and hence live forever, because it has no 
power over its own being. 

"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
surely die; " or, in other words, "so sure as thou eat- 
est, so sure shalt thou die" — the one fact will follow 
just as surely as the other fact has occurred, though it 
may not follow immediately in the fullest sense. The 
expression does not affirm the exact time when it shall 
follow, but it is rather the definite statement that it 
certainly will follow. The two events were associated 
with each other, however, not merely as antecedent 
and consequent, but as cause and effect. So it was 
in the mind of the writer, and so it was intended that 
those for whom he wrote should understand it. Death 
was understood by them in its plain physical sense, 
and was regarded as the effect, not of some sort of 
poisonous quality in the fruit, but of the act of disobe- 
dience. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil 
was not a poisonous tree, but simply a probation or. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 189 

proof -tree, the quality of whose fruit had nothing to do 
with the effect produced — neither in the view of the in- 
spired writer nor of the Israelitish people. The nexus 
between the cause and the effect was moral not physi- 
cal. By the mental resolve to disobey, or rather by 
by the volition, which culminated in the physical act 
of disobedience, man's spiritual being was thrown out 
of harmony with God, the Source and Standard of 
right The body being the spirit's abode and instru- 
ment, must share in the effect in its own way. 

But as to the causal connection between sin and 
death, the Israelitish theology did not speculate. The 
whole matter was submissively referred to the sover- 
eignty of God. Sin was, therefore, a state of aliena- 
tion from God, and physical death was its physical out- 
come. And herein the testimony of revelation is in 
harmony with the testimony of the natural religious 
consciousness. This implies, of course, that had 
there been no sin, there would have been no death — no 
human death, at least, whatever might have been the 
case with the lower animals. Had man continued sin- 
less, his body would have passed from earth, as Christ's 
body seemed about to do on the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion — through another gate than that of death — and, 
as the bodies of the saints will do, who are alive on 
the earth at his coming. But this is only an inference, 
not an express teaching, of Mosaism. 

§ L After Death. 

u 'Dust thou art, to dust returnest,' was not 
written of the soul," nor did the Israelites of this 
period of their history understand it as written of the 
soul. 



190 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

"Death," says Delitzsch, "is a breaking up of the 
divinely established substance of a living being;" or, 
in other words, in reference to man, ' 'the essence of 
death consists in the man's becoming again the same as 
he was. "* So it is in respect to his body, but not quite 
so in respect to his soul or spirit. The one dissolves 
and becomes what it had been; the other, having been 
nothing previous to its embodiment, lives on, changed 
only so far as embodiment had conditioned its being. 
The Israelites believed in the continued existence of 
the soul for the same unrevealed reasons that we do. 
He was in possession of the usual arguments, which 
arguments were confirmed by the tacit sanction of his 
inspired teachers. Mosaism, it is true, nowhere ex- 
pressly affirms that the soul or spirit of man, after the 
death of the body, continues to live in a future or in- 
visible state; for it is not the chief function of Mosa- 
ism to deal with the mysterious questions of the future 
state, but rather to teach its pupils, the chosen people, 
how to conduct themselves aright in this life. It really, 
though quietly, assumes the fact of the soul's contin 
ued existence in the invisible world, constantly endors- 
ing, in one way or another, the popular belief on the 
subject, without as yet explicitly correcting errors of 
detail. Other problems, for the present, demanded 
more immediate attention. The details of other lessons 
were first to be learned. 

But while this is true, the very fact that Grod had 
entered into a covenant with Israel was proof to Israel 
that death did not end all. He could not fail to so con- 
strue it, whether he thoroughly understood the nature 
and significance of the covenant or not. He knew 

*Biblical Psychology. 



THE Mosaic PERIOD [91 



(hat il must imply that In- was not the creature of a 
dav: it would necessarily strengthen his natural sus 
picions of immortality. And the often repeated form 
ula, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 
[saac," etc, who apparently died lone aero, musl 
have suggested something more to the Israelite- 
than that Jehovah was an immortal God, or 
that he was once the God of men who once were, or 
that he was still the God of men who once were 1 , hut 
were now altogether dead. "I am the God of Abra- 
ham," meant to the subsequent Israelites the same as 
"I am Abraham's God." But one whose soul, or per- 
sonality, has ceased to exist, cannot have a God. The 
mass of the Israelites never did, at any period of their 
history, fail to see the point of this argument, what- 
ever may have been true of the Saducees of the time of 
our Saviour. 

And the often-recurring expression, '-was gathered 
to his fathers," which must have been a familiar one to 
the people, was something more than a euphemism for 
death or burial; nor was it a mere confession of ignor- 
ance concerning the soul of the dead man. The ex- 
pression looked to the future and the invisible, and im- 
plied a belief in continued personal existence, which 

belief was approved by the inspired writers and teach- 
er- of the people, who, themselves, used the phrase. 

The [sraelitish belief in the state after death may be 

further tested and illustrated by assuming for the mo- 
ment that they did not believe in the Continued exist- 
ence of the soul, but regarded themselves as being d 
tined soon to depart into nothingness. Let this assump- 
tion be carried along and kept constantly in mind as 
one read- the Mosaic writings, or almost any other 



192 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

part of the Old Testament. What a discord will arise 
between this assumption and many of their vivid utter 
ances, even though nothing should be found in them 
either dogmatically or didactically about a future life. 
Did men who believe in no hereafter ever talk so ? 
4 'Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none 
in all the earth that I desire beside thee." "Thou art 
our dwelling place in all generations." "Art not thou 
from everlasting, Jehovah, my Holy One? r "We 
shall not die." Or take that oft repeated Hebrew 
oath, "As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth;" 
what meaning is there in such a connection of terms, 
this liking in thought the life of the soul with the life 
of Jehovah ? 

But how does all this lofty language immediately 
collapse at the presence of the low materializing idea 
which affirms that the soul dies with the body, and is 
no more, and that the ancient people of God so believed. 
This line of argument is worthy of being insisted upon, 
and I know of no one who has presented it more inter- 
estingly than Dr. Tayler Lewis, who proceeds to say: 
"Even the language of their despondency shows how 
far they (the Israelites) were from the satisfied animal 
or earthly state of soul; 'shall dust praise thee ? Shall 
thy loving kindness be declared in the grave, or thy 
righteousness in the land of oblivion ? ' It was bidding 
farewell to God, not to earth; it was losing the idea of 
the everlasting covenant and its everlasting Author, 
that imparted the deepest gloom to their seasons of 
skepticism. It was in just such travail of spirit that 
the hope [of immortality] was born in them. This was 
the subjective mode of its revelation."" 

*The Schaff-Lange Com. on Genesis. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 

The innate dread of annihilation and eternal nothing- 
ness became the natural subjective basis of a supernat- 
ural revelation uf immortality, the record of which is 
not restricted to the more devotional writings of the 
Old Testament. Such passages as Joh xiv, 10-13, and 
Pb. xxxix, 13, do not teach to the contrary-, as the 
speakers here affirm, cessation of being only of the 
present mode of existence, and hot absolutely. It is 
the language of popular speech. 

The place in which disembodied souls were con- 
ceived as -till existing was called x/,\,/, a term signi- 
fying depth) or abyss, and hence the under-world, or 
place of shades — the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek 
Hades and the Latin Orcus. Ii was the "other world" 
simply, without reference to the mora] character of the 
soul- inhabiting it. Doth the good and the had went 
alike to SAW, their long home: nor is there any clear 
distinction made between the condition- in Sh?ol of the 
righteous and the wicked. One does not go to the 
Pentateuch to find instruction on the subject of future 
rewards and punishments;* though it is not to be in- 

*Tbe fact that the whole genii - ik, of the Penta- 

teuch is in such thorough harmony with the recognized fact that 
the Old Testament revelation was a prog] revelation, both 

in respect to contents and time, is a proof, it seems to me. that 
it was written at a very early period of Hebrew history. And 
the fact that the whole genius of the Pentateuch is in such thor- 
ough harmony with the whole genius of the Hebrews at the 
lie period of their history, is a proof, it BeeMB to me, that it 
must have been written for the most part, at least, synchronously 
with that period. No antiquarian of the present day, wit: 
our abundance of English records, could so thoroughly imitate 
the English life and thought of a thousand 3 0. Bow 

much more difficult would it be to do bo if our records of the 
English ; e as meagre as the Hebrew records of their 

must have been. 



194 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

f erred from this that the idea of difference of future 
condition was not present in the early Israelitish mind. 
It was present even in the contemporary heathen relig- 
ions, but it was not yet needful that supernatural 
revelation should emphasize it by calling repeated and 
special attention to it. Other lessons were of much 
more immediate urgency than this, because the other 
truths which these lessons inculated would more read- 
ily slip from the mind. It was of immediate and fun- 
damental importance that the Israelites should be 
taught to live in harmony with their national Messianic 
mission, though the details of this mission they did 
not thoroughly understand. Nor was it necessary for 
the well-being of the Israelitish church in this world 
that it should know many details of the next world. 
The essential facts it had, and these were sufficient, 
until such time as Christ should come and bring life 
and immortality to further light. And the door is only 
ajar even to us, but is sufficiently so for the present. 

Passages like Eccl. ix, 5, 6, 10, are not to be con- 
strued as meaning that revelation taught, or that the 
Israelites at any period of their history believed that 
souls in Sttol existed in a kind of semi-conscious, 
dreamy condition, feeling an interest in the affairs 
neither of the world which they had left nor of the one 
into which they had entered. Such expressions as 
"There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor 
wisdom in Sfcol, whither thou goest," mean simply 
that when a man dies that is the end of him, so far as 
his life in this mode of existence is concerned. His 
negative relation to the life here is described, rather 
than his relation, either negative or positive, to the life 
hereafter. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 195 



Chapter IV. 



THE MOSAIC DOCTRINE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

Analysis. 

The term "theocracy," by which the kingdom is 
usually designated, is an invention of Josephus. It 
was employed by him as descriptive of the govern- 
ment of the Israelites, as being neither a monarchy nor 
oligarchy, nor democracy, but a government by God 
himself, kings and priests being, theoretically at least, 
only his representatives. Church and state were essen- 
tial parts of the same organism. The latter existed 
for the sake of the former, and the former existed for 
the sake of the purpose which it represented, viz. : the 
redemption of man. 

It is convenient to consider the contents of this 
chapter under the three-fold division of: (A.) The 
kingdom of God in its essential idea and initial prom- 
ises. (B.) The kingdom in its external organism. (C.) 
The typical and prophetical aspects of this organism. 

A. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN ITS ESSENTIAL IDEA, ETC. 

§1. Definition of tJie Kingdom 

In so far as it falls within the scope of this part of 
our studies, the kingdom of God maybe defined as the 
Divine purpose of redemption, as embodied or mani- 
fested in the government and worship of Israel; or, in 
other words, the Israelitish state-church. As the idea 
of the Kingdom of God is the central idea of the whole 
dispensation of revelation, including both the Old and 



196 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the New Testaments; so the central idea of the king- 
dom, as everywhere manifested in this world, is God's 
purpose of redemption. But redemption contemplates 
not merely any given present, but also the future; not 
merely the individual, but also the race; not merely 
Israel, but also all other nations; and man himself is 
an intelligent and free factor of the redemptive plan. 
Hence the execution of the purpose must be gradual 
and continuous; and hence also the necessity of visible 
organization. 

The phrase, "the kingdom of God," is applied, then, 
to the form which God's redemptive effort assumed 
from time to time in the process of bringing back the 
world to himself. In the earliest stages of revelation 
it appears only in the simply and briefly expressed 
purpose (Gen. iii, 15), the only memorial or symbol of 
which was the institution of sacrifices. The particular 
form in which those who have faith in the Divine pur- 
pose may organize themselves in respect to religious, 
social, sBsthetical or other matters, does not of itself 
constitute the kingdom; the redemptive purpose must 
be recognized as present in the form, in order that its 
parts may have unity, and that its whole may have 
significance. 

The kingdom of God, as distinguished from its out- 
ward and visible phases, was something abidingly 
present through the whole period of revelation, and is 
destined to exist unto eternity. Beginning with the 
smallness, as of a tender plant, its growth can be traced 
first along the line of Seth, and then of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob, gradually becoming the great tree, 
whose branches shall shelter with their benign influ- 
ence all the nations. In the later periods its central 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 197 



point and capital was called by the loved name Jeru- 
salem, on the top of whose Mount ZioD the house of 
Jehovah should be established; and all nations were 
conceived as flowing unto it in marching streams, as to 
a common center of allegiance. "And many peoples 
shall go and say, Come, ye, and let us go up to the 
mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Ja- 
cob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will 
walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the 
law, and the w r ord of Jehovah from Jerusalem. And 
he shall judge between the nations, and shall reprove 
many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into 
plowshares, and their spears into priming hooks; nation 
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more." (Isa. ii, 2-4.) The writings 
of the prophets, indeed, as we shall see, abound in 
descriptions of the future incomparable glory of the 
kingdom, and of the times when its sway should be 
universally recognized. 

Thus the kingdom of God was something ever pres- 
ent, and yet something ever coming; and in the later 
ages, where a new phase of it was already at hand, it 
was prescribed as the abiding prayers of its members 
that it might come in the yet greater and world-wide 
fullness of its glory and dominion (Matt, vi, 10). But 
the average Israelite, even during the most advanced 
stage of national culture, did not understand it; far 
more imperfectly, doubtless, was it understood by the 
people of the earlier day. Perhaps even the prophet 
sometimes spoke more wisely than he knew. The Is- 
raelites, of the Mosaic period especially, are to be 
regarded as having little correct conception of the 
meaning of it all — this promise concerning the seed of 



198 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the woman which should bruise the serpent's head, that 
in Abraham all the nations of the earth should be 
blessed, this exodus into the wilderness, this organiza- 
tion of the nation, this elaborate system of worship, 
this national exclusiveness, etc. They saw it, and yet 
they saw it not; not in the fullness of its import; not 
the particulars of the end to which it all looked. To 
them the end was for the most part, if not wholly, in 
themselves. They failed often, as a people, to regard 
themselves as a means to an end which included vastly 
more than themselves. And hence, during the long 
process of their instruction they were often a gain-say- 
ing and stiff-necked people. But the design of the 
Kingdom of God on earth, of which the Israelitish the_ 
ocracy was one of the tempory visible forms, is every, 
where the restoration of the world to loving allegiance 
to God the Father-King. 

§ 2. Initial Promises. 

The initial promises which looked to the organiza- 
tion of a visible kingdom of God are: (1) the Protevan- 
gelium, or first gospel, Gen. iii, 15; (2) the blessing 
pronounced by Noah upon Shem, Gen. ix, 26, 27; (3) 
the call and blessing of Abraham, Gen. xii, 1-3, and 
other places; (4) the blessing by Jacob upon his twelve 
sons, Gen. xlix. 

1. The Protevangelium, or First Gospel. — What- 
ever view one may have regarding the date and author- 
ship of the Pentateuch, he may safely hold that the 
Israelites of the Mosaic period were acquainted with 
the story of the Fall, substantially as related in Gen. 
iii, and with the first Gospel Promise recorded as a se- 
quel thereto. The only way in which a later writer 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 199 



could know, aside from supernatural revelation, would 
be by transmission from an earlier one. The curse 
upon the animal serpent, and through it upon the evil 
spirit, is to be regarded as a part of the Promise: 

"Because thou hast done this, cursed be thou above 
all beasts and all animals of the field; upon thy belly 
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of 
thy life. And enmity will I put between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed; and he 
shall bruise thee on the head, and thou shall bruise 
him on the heel." Gen. iii, 14, 15. 

The first intimation, not only of a purpose, but also 
of a Person, is here found in the sentence of punish- 
ment pronounced upon the Tempter immediately after 
the fall. The Tempter, as we have seen, w r as the evil 
spirit; even those for whom the narrative was origi- 
nally and primarily written never supposing that its 
meaning lay wholly upon the surface. The fact which 
the story embodied was regarded as of more impor- 
tance than the form of words into which it was cast. 

Satan and all his servants, whether human or angelic, 
are embraced in the curse pronounced upon the ser- 
pent The phrase, "seed of the woman," is also used 
in both a generic and a personal sense. In the first 
place the whole of mankind is meant, between whom, 
even in its worst state, and Satan there is an everlasting 
hostility. Satan is even the worst man's enemy, and 
the worst man knows this; and there is deeply rooted 
in him a certain, though perhaps vague and unintelli- 
gible, longing after God. His heart finds no repose till 
it reposes in Him. So it has ever been. It is this, in- 
deed, that renders man open to revolt against the do- 
minion of Satan, and makes redemption a possibility. 



&00 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

But in the narrower sense, "seed of the woman" 
means that part of the posterity of the woman who 
have already revolted against the kingdom of evil, and 
are won ' 'as trophies of grace from the seed of the ser- 
pent, and are adopted into the seed of redemption." In 
a still narrower sense, however, the seed of the woman 
is a single person who was in a peculiar sense born of 
a woman. "Thou shalt wound him upon the heel." 
This implies a personal enemy. "He shalt wound thee 
upon the head." This implies a personal seed. The 
Hebrew is unambiguous, both the pronoun and the 
verb being of the masculine gender, and the action 
such as could not be predicated of a neuter.* The 
wound of the one is to be inflicted treacherouslv on the 
heel, and is to be relatively slight; "the other is to be 
on the head, to be inflicted by an individual champion 
of his race, and shall be without deception, and shall 
prove fatal. " This individual victor, elsewhere called 
the second Adam, is the seed of the woman only, the 
head of his race, the one who shall re-establish the 
kingdom of God in all the earth in perfect peace and 
prosperity. 

But we obtain this interpretation of the First Prom, 
ise only in the light of all subsequent revelation and 
history. We live in the light of the high noon, and to 

*Some Latin Mss., and the Vulgate of Sextus V and Clement 
VIII, wrongly read, "Ipsa conteret," she shall wound, which is 
construed by the Roman Catholic Church in its own interest, 
making the pronoun she refer to the Virgin Mary. But what- 
ever doubt there may be about the unpointed Hebrew pronoun 
as meaning either he or she, there can be none about the gender 
of the Hebrew verb of which this pronoun is here the subject; 
it is certainly masculine, which is sufficient to determine the 
gender of the pronoun. The masculine suffix nu still further 
determines the gender. 



TEE MOSAIC PERIOD. 201 



us every nook and corner of the first gospel promise is 
opened np. But in the beginning, and for centuries 
afterward, it may not have been so. Gen. iii, 14, 15, 
was only a rift in the cloud of suffering and sorrow, 
and degradation, revealing a glimpse of a better day 
beyond. Those who believed in the verity of the 
glimpse, became thereby members of the kingdom of 
God; the unbelieving remained of the seed of the ser- 
pent 

But faith varied in vividness in those days, as it 
does in these. All might have -seen in the promise a 
redeeming purpose; perhaps others saw in it also a 
redeeming Person, though he was presented therein 
only as the seed of the woman, and not as a Divine 
Person wholly apart from and independent of the race 
to be redeemed. The promise was colored in its ex- 
pression by the immediate circumstances; as the sin, 
and sorrow, and suffering, had come by means of the 
woman, so also should the redemption therefrom An 
honor as well as a mercy was therein bestowed upon 
her in the outset, and the man would be only the more 
constrained to cleave unto her, though fallen and the 
cause of his own fall. Had the promise been couched 
in other terms than those suggested by the immediate 
surroundings, it would have been then and thereafter 
an unintelligible anachronism. The gospel could not 
be announced to the first pair in terms which could be 
suggested and understood only by means of subsequent 
history,- and the fact that there is here no anticipation 
of details is evidence that it is not a purely human nar- 
rative which we read. 

2. The Blessing of Shem. Noah said: 

"Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be 



202 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES, 

unto his brethren." And he said, "Blessed be Jeho- 
vah, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. 
God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of 
Shem, and let Canaan be his servant." Gen. ix, 26, 
27. 

This language is to be regarded as an inspired proph- 
ecy, and not as the expression of mere personal feel- 
ing toward his children on the part of Noah. It may 
mean more to us than it did to those to whom it was 
originally addressed, or for whom it was originally 
written; for we see it in the light of subsequent revela- 
tions and of a larger fulfillment. But it was a part of 
the creed of the members of the kingdom of God, 
which members were of the Shemitic stock, and it 
entered as a basal factor m the completer visible or- 
ganization of the kingdom. The Israelites were ever 
proud of their descent from Shem, and this prophecy 
concerning the posterity of their ancestor was one of 
the grounds of the hope -which they entertained of 
themselves as a people. Canaan represents in the 
prophecy not merely himself and his descendants, but 
the whole family of Ham, which was ultimately to be 
reduced to a position, not merely of inferiority, but of 
degradation. Japheth was to become world-wide in 
his enlargement; while the family of Shem should be 
the center, and depository of religious thought, and 
particularly of the monotheistic idea. The Elohim 
who should abide in his tents was Jehovah, the one true 
God — whether it be affirmed that this one true God 
was known in Noah's day by the name Jehovah or not. 
To Shem should Japheth go for religion, and in this 
sense he also should dwell as a pupil in the tent of 
Shem. The emphasis of the prophecy is upon Shem; 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 203 



and the Israelites could scarcely have construed the 
part relating to Japheth as meaning that he should ul- 
timately become so enlarged as to absorb Shcm. But 
whether Elohim or Japheth be regarded as the subject 
of the verb "shall dwell," the dwelling may as a mat- 
ter of fact be affirmed of both. Shem's family did be- 
come the seat and source of the kingdom of God on 
earth, by reason of the fact that Elohim did dwell in 
his tent, first as Jehovah and subsequently as Christ; 
and Japheth, on terms of fraternal harmony with his 
brother, sits as a pupil in the same tent, and thereby 
becomes himself incorporated into the same kingdom. 

The prophecy did not look beyond the degradation 
of Ham, nor did the Israelites, as a people, during any 
of the centuries of their national history, rightly ap- 
prehend the relation which the Hamites should ulti- 
mately hold to the kingdom. For the present, and 
particularly as to the descendants of Canaan (for with 
this branch the Israelites had more to do) — they were 
looked upon chiefly as outcasts, any concession which 
they might make to whom being a mere matter of 
grace. It was reserved for revelations long subsequent 
to Noah todisclose the fact that the Hamites also should 
in the distant future become a constituent part of the 
kingdom of which the Israelites were now the only 
earthly embodiment. 

But there was to the Israelites in the prophecy of 
Noah distinctly neither a human nor a Divine Messiah; 
it was only Jehovah Elohim dwelling in Shem's tents 
in such a sense as to make one branch in particular of 
that family the depository of the oracles of God, and 
Japheth's family resorting thither for their religion. 
The details of meaning were probably left to Israelii- 



204 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ish conjecture until subsequent revelation and history 
should furnish the true and full interpretation. 

3. The Blessing of Abraham. The blessing upon 
the three patriarchs is found in more or less varying 
form in Gen. xii, 1-3; xiii, 14-18; xv, 4, 5; xvii, 1.8; 
xviii, 17-19; xxii, 15-18; xxviii, 1-4; xxxv, 9-12. 

With the call and blessing of Abraham begins a new 
epoch in the historical development of the Divine pur- 
pose of redemption. The foundation is laid for the 
appearance of the kingdom of God in visible, or organ- 
ized form. The development of the Divine purpose is 
no longer presented as taking place through u the seed 
of the woman," in the general sense of that term, nor was 
it any longer entrusted to the whole family of Shem. 
It is Abraham's seed, his sons, however, by Keturah, 
and Hagar, and Isaac's son Esau, being excluded from 
the organized kingdom. But the exclusion for the 
present of all but the seed through Jacob was in order 
to the subsequent inclusion of all mankind. Of course, 
however, it is not to be understood that the exclusion 
of any persons from the covenant people, or visible 
kingdom, shut out all possibility of individual salvation 
on the part of such persons. 

The blessing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was not 
only the basis of all subsequent redemptive movement, 
but was also the magna charta of the Israelitish nation. 
It was this that made the twelve tribes one people, 
that gave the highest significance to their national ex- 
istence, and to this appeal was constantly made through 
the whole of their history. The constant use among 
the earlier Israelites of the name Jehovah as the God 
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as such often re- 
curring words as Psa. xx, 1, and Isa. li, 1, 2, among 



THE MOSAIC VERIOD. 205 

the later, illustrate how firm a hold the past always had 

on them as a pledge of the future. 

But the gist of the promise to the three patriarchs 
was, that in their seed all the nations of the earth 
should be blessed; "their seed'' being not merely the 
literal Israel, but also the spiritual which should after- 
wards be, and foremost of all the personal Messiah — 
the seed, however, in the sense of the literal [sraelitish 
Church being the providential prerequisite of the seed 
in the personal Messianic sense. But the Israelites 
foiled to apprehend the full redemptive import of the 
promise, and hence in their relation to the kingdom of 
God they wrought to an end which they did not clearly 
know. 

4. The Blessing of the Twelve Patriarchs, Gen. 
xlix, 1-28. Not one of the sons is excluded, as has 
been the case with Esau and lshmael. Providential 
circumstances had united the tw ? elve into one social 
body. Their interest and hopes were the same, and 
the union was destined ere long to be made still closer 
by a common suffering. And perhaps not one was 
wholly faithless or indifferent in regard to the promise 
made to the fathers. Even the house of Joseph, which 
was at one time far removed from his brethren in for- 
tune and position, was brought back, not only by 
reason of an unswerving faith in the future, but also 
by the pressure of political circumstances. So the time 
was at hand for the enlargement of the family into a 
people. Jacob, the father, was the medium of the 
prophetic blessing, and by the inclusion of all his sons, 
the twelve foundation stones were formally laid of the 
visible kingdom of God. 

The words necessarily received their coloring from the 



206 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

deep impression left upon Jacob by his own long, varied 
and severe experience. All was well now, but the past 
abode with him. His three eldest sons are reduced to a 
subordinate position among their brethren, on account of 
their wanton and passionate cruelty. His vision rests 
pathetically on the promised land, from which he, dur- 
ing so many years of his life, had lived in enforced 
exile. His words are the history of the tribes in minia- 
ture, from the entrance and conauest of Canaan to the 
end of the Israelitish nation. 

But while the whole passage is significant in its rela- 
tion to the development of the kingdom of Grod the 
prophecy in regard to Judah was the one most specifi- 
cally so. He was the lion-like one in war, and led the 
other tribes in valor; nor should his tribal existence cease 
until He should come to whom belonged the sceptre, 
and unto whom the people should yield willing obedi- 
ence — words which certainly found their fulfillment in 
the Messiah-King. There is nothing, however, requir- 
ing us to believe that Jacob, or any of the tribes saw 
in the word Shiloh a Divine personal Messiah, who 
afterward came to be called Shiloh. His vision was 
of a coming One, to whom Sovereignty rightfully be- 
longed, and around whom the people would gather, 
and to whom they would render glad obedience, To 
this future Judah might ever look, and the abiding 
hope of its realization would be only another guaranty 
of the perpetuity of the kingdom of God.* 



*The question as to the right translation of Gen. xlix, 10, has 
given rise to much discussion, and the answers have been, vari- 
ous; but it sesms that the idea intended to be conveyed is as 
above given, -nd is not antagonistic to our English versions. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 207 

§3. The Redemptive Calling of Israel. 

The Israelites being redeemed from bondage in 
Egypt, by Jehovah's mighty hand, they cease to be a 
mere people, and become henceforth a nation. This 
introduces us to their formal redemptive call to be 
a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. 

"Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell 
the children of Israel: u Ye have seen what I did unto 
the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles' wings, 
and brought you unto myself. Now, therefore, if ye 
will obey my voice, indeed, and keep my covenant, 
then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from 
among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and ye 
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy 
nation." (Ex. xix, 3-6. 

1. Tfie Basis of the Call. The immediate basis of 
the call was the covenant of promise made with the 
patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The remoter 
basis was the Divine purpose, which looked beyond 
Israel to the redemption of the world. The knowledge 
of the patriarchal promise still preserved among them, 
and recently greatly enlivened by the events of the 
exodus, enabled the Israelites to apprehend with some 
degree of clearness the immediate end aimed at in the 
call, but with far less clearness the remoter end to 
which they were probably to a great extent the uncon- 
scious means. It was to them in large part the occa- 
sion only of the glorification of themselves, the fuller 
knowledge being the possession of the Divinely gifted 
few. 

Jehovah's election of Israel was an act of pure love; 
not, indeed, that he Loved Israel alone, but m order 
that through Israel he might wound the serpent Upon 



208 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the head, and win all men back to himself. It can be 
called an act of necessity only in so far as it may be 
said that God was bound by his very nature to adhere 
to his promise made to Abraham; but this promise was 
provoked in the first place by nothing but pure love. 
God may have foreseen that Israel would prove to be 
more available to his redemptive purpose than another 
nation which he might call would be; nevertheless, Is- 
rael's election was an act of free grace, for God was 
under no compulsion, except that of his love, to choose 
any people to fill the Messianic office which Israel filled. 

2. The Nature and Significance of the Call. 

(a.) Jehovah declared himself in the call to be al- 
ready the Sovereign of the whole earth, but that he 
would constitute Israel into a peculiar kingdom, over 
which he would rule in a special and peculiar man- 
ner; the sceptre being {he sceptre of absolute sover- 
eignty, it is true, but the sovereignty was to be the 
sovereignty of love; a kingdom which should stand 
to him in the relation of bride, and in relation to 
whom he should be the tender Lover, "spreading the 
wings of love over the chosen one, but also a strict 
and jealous Husband, demanding fidelity and love, 
punishing unfaithfulness and apostacy, requiring a 
royal heart in the royal bride; seeking by love and 
discipline to train her will, trying and proving her." 
(Isa. liv, 5; Jer. xxxi, 2, 3.) 

(b.) The nature and significance of the call is fur- 
ther seen in the fact that the relationship into which it 
brought Israel with Jehovah, is also presented, under 
the figure of sonship. No other nation was regarded as 
so related to him. Israel was his first-born son, c 'brought 
forth under the anguish of Egyptian bondage, by the 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 209 

aid of a heavenly midwife." "Thus saith Jehovah, 
Israel is my son, my first-born." (Ex. iv, 22.) "When 
Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my 
son out of Egypt." (Hos. xi, 1.) He preferred him 
for the end in view to other nations, and bestowed 
upon him the primogeniture, a double portion of his 
Fatherly care and culture. In due time other sons 
were to be born, but not yet; in due time other nations 
were to be incorporated into the kingdom, but for the 
present Israel is his only one and peculiar favorite. 

(c.) Israel was regarded also as the property of Jeho- 
vah. The whole earth was his; but they, keeping his 
covenant and hearkening attentively to his voice, 
should become to him a choice possession, a treasure 
peculiarly his own beyond all peoples. On the condi- 
tion named Israel was to be Jehovah's property, 
not by virtue of creation only, as were the other 
nations, but by virtue of their own redemption 
and of the use which he would make of them in the 
ultimate redemption of others. Other nations had 
been created; Israel, only, had as yet been begotten; 
Israel, only, had he redeemed from foreign slavery to 
be in a higher sense his own. But Israel was ever to 
remember that their Jehovah was not limited in his 
, possession to themselves. " The whole earth is mine." 
He was no mere national God, co-ordinate with the 
gods of other nations, but the Only One, the Univer- 
sal One, in respect to whom the gods of other nations 
were mere nothings. If Israel would not be his own 
he could choose another. His exclusive and universal 
sovereignty was the groundwork, not only of Israel's 
conception of God, but also of his unswerving alle- 
giance to him. 



210 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

(d.) But Israel was to be not merely peculiarly 
Jehovah's own. It was to be his people, but with an 
end in view, which, while it included Israel, looked be- 
yond Israel. Hence the covenant people were to be a 
kingdom of priests and a holy nation; or, a kingdom 
and a priesthood combined; a nation all the members 
of which were priest-kings; a nation educated, disci- 
plined, and set apart by Jehovah to the accomplish- 
ment of his redemptive purpose. The priesthood of 
Israel was not the priesthood of Aaron. It was before 
Aaron's, and it was perpetual and universal. It was 
rather after the order of Melchisedec, who represented 
no family and performed priestly functions for no tribe 
and no man in particular. As Melchisedec represented 
the true God in the darkening world about him, so 
should Israel; as God mediated through Aaron with 
Israel, so through Israel would he mediate with the 
world. Israel should come out from the other nations, 
be apart from them, not merely geographically, but in 
religion considered both as matters of belief and as 
matters of cultus, and in the exercise of its priestly 
functions receive, preserve and communicate to other 
nations and to future generations God's revelations and 
promises; for Israel had been constituted the first born 
in the outset only as a pledge that there should be 
other sons. But Israel was not merely a priesthood, 
but also a kingdom, the embodiment on earth of the 
the redemptive kingdom of which God himself was 
King. The central idea of both priesthood and king- 
dom is universal salvation, the latter being the form 
assumed by the results which the other achieves. As 
Israel's priesthood implies a prior patriarchal priesthood, 
so theocracy implies a prior form of the kingdom. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 211 

After a while when Israel shall have slowly and reluct- 
antly and blindly fulfilled all its functions as priesthood 
and kingdom, the form of both will be again changed, 
but the essence will remain; and when the kingdom of 
Jehovah shall ultimately have become co-extensive with 
the Kingdom of Elohim, all enemies being put under 
his feet, there shall be no longer a priesthood, but only 
a kingdom. 



\- 



£ 4. Obligations and Penalties Involved in the Call. 

The call of Israel implies the acceptance by Israel of 
the call, and this in turn implies the acceptance by the 
covenant people of certain obligations and the risk of 
certain penalties, should the obligations fail to be met. 

1. The obligation upon the covenant people consisted 
in the duty on their part to conform to the conditions 
annexed to the covenant. In the case of the Abrahamic 
call the conditions are recorded in Gen. xvii, 1 ff, xviii, 
19: " walk before me and be thou perfect; " u ye shall 
be circumcised;'' "keep the way of the Jehovah;" 
" do justice and judgment." The perfection here re- 
quired was not sinlessness, but doing justice and judg- 
ment, walking without deviation from the line marked 
out by the will of Jehovah. In the case of Israel the 
obligation was the same: " If ye will obey my voice," 
(Ex. xix, 5): Perfect submission to Jehovah's will, and 
faithfulness thereto as expressed in his law, the de- 
tails of which were about to be given, but the substance 
of which was, " Be ye holy for I am holy;" be ye 
apart in all respects from other nations, as I am apart 
in all respects from other gods ; a holiness which was 
already illustrated in circumcision, and was soon to be 
illustrated in its fullest import by the whole Mosaic 



212 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



legislation. To conform to whatever might be the requi- 
sitions of this legislation was to be hoi}-, and to be holy 
was to fulfill the obligations involved in the call. In 
this sense, therefore, the moral, the ceremonial, and 
the civil legislation of Moses were of co-ordinate im- 
portance. Each was to be regarded as the legislation 
of Jehovah, and to disobey either branch was to disa- 
vow allegiance to him, and hence be no longer apart 
from other nations. The ground of all alike was the 
required holiness of the people, and all were alike obli- 
gatory until abrogated by the accomplishment of the 
object aimed at in their institution. Once having sub- 
scribed to the terms of the call, or covenant, the peo- 
ple have no alternative but to conform to these condi- 
tions or be punished. 

2. In the Mosaic period retribution is for obvious 
reasons mainly restricted to the present life, though 
this does not imply that the doctrine of punishment in 
the future state was not one of the beliefs of the peo- 
ple. This silence concerning the future was due to 
the importance of the present. Israel as a nation was 
undergoing a process of Divine tuition for a purpose 
which included not only themselves, but all nations 
and all times. This tuition might be better accom- 
plished by appealing for the most part to such retribu- 
tion as might be inflicted in the present life, and 
hence not only upon the individual Israelite but also 
upon the nation. The individual was important be- 
cause the Kingdom of God, as represented in the na- 
tion, was important, and this was important because 
of its mission, or the larger things to which it looked 
and of which it was both the prophecy and means. 
The retributive punishments inflicted upon individuals 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 213 

and families during the early history of the Israelites, 
and for whieh no distinct legal provision had been 
made, as in the case of Abiram, Dathan, Korah and 
Achan, were due not merely to the turpitude of the 
sins of which they were guilty as between themselves 
and Jehovah; but, also, and chiefly to the fact that 
they were members of a body-politic which was for the 
time being the Kingdom of God, and which, in order 
to the fulfillment of its redemptive world-mission, must 
be made to know speedily and keenly the heinousness 
of all forms of conduct which stood in the way of that 
fulfillment, Only by a speedy apocopation of the dis- 
eased member could the body be saved from the deadly 
infection. Such punishment, therefore, in order to be 
understood aright, and relieved of apparent dispropor- 
tionate severity must be considered, not so much in 
their relation to the crime, as in the relation oi the crime 
to their nation and the nation's mission. They were of 
the nature of military punishments, justified by the 
importance of the matter at stake. And not one of 
the least effective ways whereby to instill into the 
minds of the people an adequate idea of the importance 
of their national mission, was to inflict deadly punish- 
ment upon every individual who interfered seriously 
with its accomplishment. Nor was it required by 
equity that the guilty one should know in advance of 
his crime and its punishment that he came into collision 
with the nation's mission; for the only way to impart 
such knowledge was by the object-lesson, punishment. 
The expressly and divinely prescribed forms of na- 
tional punishment' were shortening of life, childlessness 
and diminution of population, scarcity and famine, 
and captivity among enemies, or in short, the with- 



214 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



drawal of the divine blessings. The prescription of 
these punishments served to put the people on their 
guard and to keep •them in the line of their 
mission, while their actual infliction served to 
notify them of departures therefrom and to 
bring them back to loyalty. But in the 
case of refusal to repent and return, Israel would cease 
to be the chosen people and the covenant would be- 
come nugatory, Jehovah, on his part, being absolved 
therefrom; unless, instead, there should still be a 
remnant to whom his holiness required him still to be 
faithful. For while Jehovah had elected Israel, and 
was unalterably fixed in his purpose to redeem the 
world in accordance with his promise, Gen. iii, 15, he 
had not unconditionally elected Israel to be the medium 
of this redemption. This view of the matter reconciles 
the divine election of Israel with the more than twice 
repeated threat of Jehovah to annihilate Israel as a na- 
tion on account of its disobedience, for however true it 
is that he foresaw that a remnant would always be left 
to him, it cannot be said that he threatened merely to 
alarm. Should Israel fail, he could raise up another 
people through Moses, or Isaiah, or one who might 
still be faithful, and thereby fulfill his ultimate purpose 
and also preserve intact his promise to Abraham that 
in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. 

B. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS ORGANIZED ISRAEL. 

§ 1. The Theocratic Character of the Government 

of Israel. 

The government of Israel, as organized by Moses 
under Divine direction, and, indeed, as continued 
through all the subsequent ages of its history, was a 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 215 

union of church and state. It was not a state plus a 
church, but a state-church, or a church-state, a combi- 
nation of two into one homogeneous body; the state 
being the church acting in civil capacity and the church 
being the state acting in religious and ecclesiastical ca- 
pacity. Hence the government may be regarded as 
either church or state, according to the particular func- 
tion under consideration. This form of all others was 
most in harmony w r ith Israel's world-wide redemptive 
mission, and most conducive to its fulfillment. Only 
thus could Jehovah keep himself in personal relation 
with his people; only thus could he act in their history, 
instead of merely on it from without. His standpoint 
must be visible to them in order that he himself 
might be visible, and he himself must be vis- 
ible in order that he might not pass out of Israel's 
mind, the consequence of which would be that Israel 
would soon become as the heathen. As it was the 
purpose in view, however, that rendered this form of 
government the best, it does not follow that it would 
be any longer the best after the purpose was accom- 
plished. 

As a result of this necessary combination of the 
church and state functions, the historical subject- 
matter of the Old Testament, not only during the Mo- 
saic period, but subsequently to the end, is largely 
what we would now call political, the study of Hebrew 
politics being the study of a great part of the Bible. It is 
sacred politics, however, because of its inseperable con- 
nection with the outward form assumed by the kingdom 
of God and its intimate bearing upon the Divine pur- 
pose and plan of redemption; but it is sacred politics 
to us only in so far as we study it in this connection 



216 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

and with this in view. God is not merely in the Old 
Testament as a matter of opinion on the part of those 
who wrote it. He was actually in the history of which 
the Old Testament is the record; and he was there as 
he was not in the history of any pagan nation. God 
was the sovereign of the whole world in a sense, hut 
he was the sovereign of Israel in particular. The He- 
brew theology was in harmony with the facts in the 
case. Practically he was the sovereign of Israel in 
particular because Israel recognized him to be so; and 
the relation of Israel to the other nations often brought 
his sovereignty into relation to them. But they saw 
him not; his dark, invisible side was toward them, the 
bright visible side of the pillow of his sovereignty being 
only toward Israel. He wrought among the heathens, 
but with a hand thev did not see. As the reference of 
all terrestrial events whatever, directly and immediately 
to God as their cause, was a fundamental principle of 
the Hebrew theology, so the direct and immediate 
reference to his will of all human actions, whether pri- 
vate or official, was a fundamental principle of the 
Hebrew constitution. All immediate steps in either 
case were passed over, being neither affirmed nor de- 
nied. In regard to all the enactments, or to any one 
enactment, it was enough to say: "Ye shall observe 
all these statutes [for] I am Jehovah. " 

But while God thus brought himself face to face 
with the Israelites, becoming in a peculiar sense the 
head of the nation, and so continuing during the sub- 
sequent periods of Old Testament history, " it is to be 
especially noticed that [his] claim to their allegiance is 
based, not on his power or wisdom, but on his special 
mercy in being their Saviour from Egyptian bondage. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 217 

Because they were made free by him, therefore they 
became his servants; and the declaration which stands 
at the opening of the law is: I am the Lord thy God 
which brought thee out of the land of Egypt." See 
Ex. xxi, 1; Dent, v, 6; Josh, xxiv, 1-13; 1 Sam. xii, 
6-15. Not only, therefore, w 7 as it provided in the Mo- 
saic constitution, and recognized in subsequent history, 
that God should be the absolute legislative, judicial, 
and military head of the nation as such, but that he 
should also be the absolute owner of the people; and 
this fact lies at the basis of the law requiring a ransom 
to be paid for the first born (Ex. xxx, 11-16). It was 
a perpetual object-lesson, serving to remind the people 
that they were not their own, and thus protecting 
their allegiance to Jehovah. So also is to be explained 
the law distinguishing between the Hebrew and the 
foreign slave. (Lev. xxv, 39-46); the title of one He- 
brew in another as his slave could not be absolute, but 
only limited, as all Hebrews were already the property 
of Jehovah. The land laws were similarly restrictive, 
and for the same reason. The title of everything was 
vested absolutely in Jehovah. The whole net-w T ork 
of legislation, indeed, provided thoroughly against for- 
getfulness on the part of the people that Jehovah was 
not only their God, but was also their absolute King; 
a being not only to be worshipped by them in their in- 
dividual and organized capacity, but also one to be 
obeyed and served both in private and in governmental 
matters. 

He was the avowed and recognized King of Israel, 
but his special ruiership over other nations was with- 
drawn because it was not recognized; and in the Old 
Testament he is called king of all nations only in a 



218 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

general sense, or with reference to the future time 
when all the kingdoms of the earth should cease to be 
mere kingdoms of the earth, and become incorporated 
into the kingdom of God and his Son, and there should 
be no more a distinction between history sacred and 
history profane. 

§ 2. The Mosaic Constitutional Law. 

1. The political-religious constitution of the Israel 
itish commonwealth was founded, as we have seen, 
upon a religious basis; its fundamental principles be- 
ing the absolute sovereignty of Jehovah over both the 
individual and the state, and the required holiness of 
the people even as Jehovah himself was holy. Every- 
thing in the political make-up of the commonwealth 
looked to the recognition and enforcement of these 
principles. Even the legislation, which may seem to 
have been purely sanitary, was not designed to end 
merely in the prevention or removal of disease. The 
state was nothing if not religious, and the religion 
must be of the prescribed type. The religious element 
could no more be eliminated from the Israelitish consti 
tution, than could the judicial, legislative, or executive, 
from our system of government. But the principle 
was recognized, not exactly that the people existed for 
the government, but rather that the government ex- 
isted for the people, and the people for a purpose 
which begun in themselves and which should end in 
the bringing of all mankind into the kingdom of God. 
This principle was an essential element even of the 
Mosaic constitution, and continued so to be to the end 
of the national history, though the people did not at 
any time clearly apprehended it, and oftentimes seemed 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 219 



totally to misapprehend it; as did even David when he 
sought to number the people for the purpose of waging 
a stilish, and not a theocratic war; as did also Jonah 
the prophet, perhaps, when he refused to go on an 
evangelical mission to Nineveh. 

Therefore, the central thought of the whole Mosaic 
system was one which pertained to the people as such 
rather than to the government as such: " Thou shalt 
love Jehovah, thy God," etc., "and thy neighbor as 
thyself," which of course implied the recognition of 
Jehovah alone as God. This central principle whereby 
the allegiance and conduct of the people was to be con- 
trolled, was expanded on the two tables of stone into 
the Ten Words, or Ten Commandments, which thus 
became at the very outset of .the national existence a 
part of the fundamental law. The enactments of the 
two tables, respectively, were equally binding, idolatry 
being treason, and an attempt to introduce idolatry be- 
ing sedition, and both being punishable, as was murder, 
with death. 

2 But in addition to special fundamental laws, an 
organism was provided whereby that which would 
otherwise have been a mere collection of people was 
transformed into a nation. The same origin, the saint 
suffering, the same religion, and the same land, were 
essential to the national unity, but were not of them- 
selves sufficient for its procurement and preservation. 
There must be one central place of worship, common 
to all the people alike, and one official, with his as- 
sistants, to serve all and represent all in the details of 
the worship; and the laws thus providing for the unity 
of the people and their national perpetuity, are to be 
regarded as a part of the fundamental or constitutional 



220 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



law. But many things in the constitution of the gov- 
ernment would evidently remain as they had been 
prior to the time of Moses. The division of the peo- 
ple had been, and continued to be, into tribes; these 
into clans or associated families, and these again into 
families or households. Each tribe had its tribal head 
or prince, as also each clan and household its head. 

In addition to the Tabernacle and Priesthood, there 
was a visible bond of union and head of all, who, how- 
ever, was merely Jehovah's representative, or servant, 
appointed by him to administer the affairs of the gov- 
ernment and execute the laws which Jehovah himself 
had given. He was assisted by a corps of subordinates, 
called elders, a general term used to designate also the 
princes of the tribes and the heads of clans. Special 
judges also were appointed over tens, fifties, hun- 
dreds, and thousands The fundamental law also pro- 
vided for a sort of legislative assembly, which should 
meet irregularly, according to particular exegencies. 
The members as such were not elected, the assembly 
of any given neighborhood or -city being composed of 
already elected or hereditary elders of the same neigh- 
borhood or city. All the elders of a tribe composed 
the general assembly of that tribe, and all the elders 
of the several tribes, when convened, composed the 
general assembly of the whole nation. (Deut. xix, 12; 
xx, 8, 9; Josh, xxni, 1, 2, xxiv). The only heredi- 
tary office at first seems to have been the priesthood, 
unless, indeed, we may infer that the tribal and sub- 
tribal heads were such. But if so it was due to what 
we may call the previously existing common law, 
rather than to explicit legislation at the time the gov- 
ernment was organized. These hereditary priests 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 221 

were members, cx-officio, of the general assembly. 
No provision was made in the constitution for a suc- 
cessor of Moses, Joshua having received his appoint- 
ment through him directly from Jehovah; Moses' 
own sons heing left to obscurity, to which the 4 un- 
swerving patriot and servant of God and his people 
submitted without a recorded murmur. 

3. The government as organized by Moses was pos- 
sessed of a judicial system simple in its structure, hut 
elaborate in its extent. The total number of judges, 
or magistrates of different grades, amounted to many 
thousands. According to the first census (Num. i, 45), 
the total number of judges of tens, hundreds, and 
thousands, would be 66,993. The settlement in Ca- 
naan being effected, these magistrates would be dis- 
tributed throughout all the cities, villages, and rural 
neighborhoods. By these all minor causes were tried, 
the weightier causes and appeals being carried to the 
supreme judge or ruler of the commonwealth; and in 
case of a failure here, to the high priest. Distinctions 
between questions of law and questions of fact do not 
seem to have been drawn with nicety in the days of 
Moses; and owing to the theocratic nature of the gov- 
ernment, and the consequent moral end to which the 
entire legislation looked, distinctions between ecclesi- 
astical, civil, and criminal causes were also inapplica- 
ble. The same court had cognizance alike of all 
causes. The sentence, or judgment, of the final 
court had to be accepted under pain of death. (I)eut. 
xvii, ^-13). At least two witnesses were required in 
all capital matters (Numb. XXXV, 30; Deut xvii, 6, 7). 
Punishment was required to be personal, and not to 
include the family of the guilty (Deut. xxiv, 16), in 



222 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



which respect the Mosaic jurisprudence differed from 
that of other Oriental nations (Esth. ix, 13, 14). The 
one who ate the sour grapes should have his own, and 
not another's, teeth set on edge. (Jer. xxxi, 29, 30; 
Ezek xviii, 20). 

4. The course of judicial procedure was simple, 
and briefly as follows: In Egypt, whence the Israelites 
had come, the accusing party committed the charge to 
writing, the accused party replied in writing, the ac- 
cuser repeated the charge, and the accused replied 
again, etc. In the Mosaic code, however, the pro- 
cedure is less formal, and more summary. Hence 
the complaint is brought before the judge by word of 
mouth, either by the accuser himself, or by others 
bringing both parties in the cause into court. (Deut. 
Xxi, 20; xxii, 16, xxv, 1). If the accused person did 
not voluntarily appear he was sent for by the court. 
It can only be inferred, however, from Deut. xxv, 8, 
that this was the case in all causes. The accusing 
party, or plaintiff, was called technically the Satan, 
or the Adversary. The judge, or judges, were seated 
with their legs crossed upon the floor, which was fur- 
nished for their accommodation with a carpet and 
cushions. Both the parties to the suit, or trial, stood 
up, the accuser to the right of the accused, the latter 
appearing in later times, at least, in garments of 
mourning and with disheveled hair. It is not certain 
that the court in the Mosaic times employed a clerk; 
subsequently, at least, one was provided who made a 
complete record of the judicial proceedings. . 

In some instances, in which the nature of the case 
rendered it possible, the simple exhibition in court of 
the article in legislation was regarded as evidence. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 223 



(Ex. xxii, 12, 13; Deut. xxii, 15). The complaint in 
court of a parent against his son for disobedience was 
regarded as proof, no other being required. (Deut. 
xxi, 18-21). In general, however, the testimony of 
at least two witnesses was required, or three, includ- 
ing the testimony of the accuser. The witnesses were 
put upon their oath, being solemnly adjured to tell the 
truth. (Lev. v, 1.) The witnesses were examined 
separately, but the person accused had the privilege of 
being present when their testimony was taken. (Num. 
xxxv, 30; Deut. xvii, 1-15). Sometimes the sacred 
lot was resorted to for the purpose of determining the 
point in dispute, an instance of which we find in Josh. 
vii, 11—21:. Torture was not resorted to in the earliest 
period of the national history as a means of evidence, 
or for extorting a confession of guilt. In later times, 
however, the custom of applying torture for this pur- 
pose was borrowed from the Greeks. Jails or prisons 
were not used as places of detention, either before trial 
or after trial, though they were used as places of con- 
finement by way of punishment after sentence was 
pronounced. As a rule the punishment was inflicted 
immediately, i Num. xv, 36; Deut. xxii, 18). 

§ 3. The Mosaic Civil Code. 

1. Concerning parents and children. The type of 
the relation existing between parents and children was 
the relation between Jehovah and his people. As the 
one was, so was the other to be regarded. The core of 
the Mosaic constitution being the theocratic principle, 
he who exercised authority at all exercised it by a Di- 
vine right. So with the parent, the father especially, 
the mother, however, being also expressly mentioned 



224 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

in the law. (Ex. xx, 12). Oflences of children against 
parents were punishable in the same manner as the 
same offences against God. The absolute power of 
life and death, however, was vested not in the father, 
but in the magistrates of his district or city, though 
the formal accusation of the parents was sufficient, 
without further investigation or inquiry, to secure the 
capital punishment of the child. (Deut. xxi, 18-21). 
But the irresponsible and extreme power of life and 
death, conceded by the Roman and other heathen laws 
was withheld from the Israelite father. The authority 
of the parent was further restrained by the constant 
recognition of the fact, symbolized in circumcision 
and the law requiring the redemption of the first born, 
that his children were primarily not his own, but Je- 
hovah's. (Numb, xviii, 16; Ex. xiii, 15). 

But while the authority of the parents, and the love 
and service due to them from the children, and even 
from the grand children, are recognized in the most 
prominent and emphatic manner, the welfare and in- 
terest of the children are also protected by the law. 
The parents were required to educate their children 
in all matters pertaining to the civil and religious 
polity. (Deut. iv, 9; vi, 6 ff.) A law was enacted 
(Deut. xxi, 15-17), forbidding parental partiality from 
ignoring the common law right of primogeniture. On 
the father's death the first-born son became the head 
of the family, and his authority over it was similar to 
that possessed by the father, though this was also a 
matter of the common law which the Mosaic legisla- 
tion merely recognized. (1 Sam. xx, 29). The power 
of the father over the daughter ceased at her marriage 
and passed to her husband. If an unmarried daughter 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 225 



should make a vow the father could not disannul it, 
unless he did so on the day when it was made. 
fNurn. xxx, 3-5). There is no sufficient reason for 
believing that the daughter became in any sense 
"of age" at twelve years, as modern Jewish author- 
ities teach. 

2. Marriage laws. The object of the Mosaic leg- 
islation was not to interfere radically with what we 
may call the existing common law regarding marriage, 
but only to add such enactments as would mitigate 
rather than entirely remove existing evils. 

As the power of the father over the daughter before 
marriage was practically absolute, so was the power of 
the husband after marriage. Only two classes of 
women may be said to have possessed an independent 
legal existence; the woman who had married and thus 
been freed from the will of her father, and had been 
divorced and thus freed from the will of her husband; 
the other was the heiress, or only child of her deceased 
parents. The married woman could never enter inde- 
pendently into any engagement, even before God. 
(Num. xxx, 6-15). In harmony with the benevolent 
intention of the Mosaic legislation, betrothal was re- 
garded as virtually equivalent to marriage; and faith- 
lessness on the part of a betrothed virgin was punisha- 
ble with death, as was also the betrayer. The husband, 
in this case, however, might instead of the punish- 
ment of death, put the woman to whom he was be- 
trothed away by a bill of divorcement, but in the 
event the accusation against her proved to be false, the 
husband forever thereafter forfeited the right of di- 
vorce, (Deut. xxii, 23, 24; xxiv, 1), and was required 
also to pay a fine. (Deut. xxii, 13-21). 



226 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Moses, however, neither instituted nor forbade di- 
vorce, but only suffered it, regarding it as a contraven* 
tion, both of the law of nature and of God. He waa 
legislating under Divine guidance primarily for his 
own times and his own people, and since he could not 
extirpate at a blow an evil which was traditional and 
common, he sought to hedge about the evil by re- 
strictive legislation, and thus prepare the public mind 
for its complete abolition. He provided that divorce 
should hereafter be under the restraint of legal process, 
and not as heretofore at the arbitrary will and pleas- 
ure of the husband. He also enacted that the divorced 
wife who married a second time should stand to her 
former husband in the relation of an adulteress; and 
he could not under any circumstances remarry her. In 
order to further endear the marriage tie, and prevent 
its frivolous rupture, it was also enacted that if one 
married his slave, whether one bought or captured in 
war, she ceased thereupon to be his actual property; 
she could no longer be sold, and if ill-treated she was 
to be declared free and at liberty to go whithersoever 
she would. (Ex. xxi, 7-9; Deut. xxi, 10-14). 

The law relating to levirate marriage is found in 
Deut. xxv, 5-10. The custom existed before the time 
of Moses (Gen. xxxviii), and was not peculiar to the 
Hebrews. Moses recognized the common law on this 
subject in his legislation and introduced various wise 
and politic limitations of its rigor. The duty of mar- 
rying the deceased brother's or kinsman's widow was 
recognized merely as one of affection to the memory of 
the deceased, and could not be enforced by law. 

For the Mosaic table of prohibited marriages see 
Lev. xviii, the remarkable nature and excellence of 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 327 

which can only be duly appreciated by contrasting it 
with the abominations and irregularities in the usages 
even of the most cultivated nations of antiquity. Here 
Moses antagonized also the common law of the He- 
brews. The Mosaic law also expressly prohibited 
marriage with the Canaanites, a law which, however, 
was not observed with the greatest strictness. (Ex. 
xxxiv, 16; Dent, vii, 3, 4; Jud. iii, 6, 7). 

The attitude of the legislation in regard to polygamy 
can be regarded only as one of toleration, and not of 
sanction. To have positively prohibited it would 
have put the legislator in conflict with his people in re- 
spect to an ancient custom, and any positively prohib- 
itory legislation would have been virtually a dead let- 
ter. Polygamy, however, besides being sanctioned 
by ancient common law, may have been for the time 
being the least of two or more evils which would nec- 
essarily have taken its place had any decided attempt 
been made to abolish it. But the spirit of Mosaism 
was against it, recognizing only the marriage of one 
man to one woman as the ideal marriage, and which 
would gradually lead to such a change of public 
sentiment as to bring about the voluntary abandon- 
ment of polygamy. 

3 Concerning master and slave. In slavery also 
the legislator found an institution of long and general 
standing, and which could not be abolished without 
also abolishing the prevalent type of civilization. This 
latter he could not do, for the very nature of the Di- 
vine purpose in regard to Israel and the world required 
that it should be wrought out by a process and not by 
a stupendous miracle. The best 3 therefore, which the 
legislator could do was to enact laws which would mit- 



228 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

igate the evils of slavery, and gradually prepare for 
and lead to its total abolition. 

In the Mosaic code, indeed, we find the very earliest 
trace of legislative protection of the slave; slight it 
may be, but contrasting favorably with the cruelty of 
ancient practice. All Hebrew bondmen it seems were 
treated, in regard to life and limb, like freemen, but 
the master was permitted by the law to retain the 
right to chastise his foreign slave with a rod; but 
under such restraint as to incur such punishment as 
the judges might impose if the chastised slave died 
under his hand. (Ex. xxi, 20; compare verse 12). 
And when a master inflicted a permanent injury on 
the person of his bond-servant, he was required to give 
him his absolute freedom as an equivalent for the lost 
member. (Ex. xxi, 26, 27). 

The servitude of Hebrew slaves who had become 
such, either in consequence of debt (Lev. xxv, 39), or 
of the commission of theft (Ex. xxii, 3), could not be 
enforced bylaw for a longer period than six full years, 
and at the expiration of that time the liberated bond- 
man could not be sent away without a liberal supply 
of provisions. His wife and children became free 
with him only if they came to his master with him. 
(Ex. xxi, 1-6; Deut. xv, 12-18). A slave might vol- 
untarily condemn himself to perpetual bondage by the 
formula of having his ears bored; though it is not cer- 
tain that he also was not liberated at the Jubilee. 
(Lev. xxv, 10, 11). 

A slave sold to a resident foreigner might be re- 
deemed by his kinsman at a price proportional to the 
distance from the Jubilee. (Lev. xxv, 4T T 54r). For- 
eigners who became slaves to Hebrews were to be 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 229 

held and inherited as property, and fugitive slaves 
from foreign nations could not be given up. (Lev. 
xxv, 45, 46; Deut. xxiii, 15). 

4. Concerning foreigners. Four terms are used 
to describe them. The ger, designated the foreigner 
who resided temporarily among the Israelites; the 
toshab, the one who resided permanently among them ; 
the ezrah, a foreigner born among the Israelites; and 
the goyim, the nations generally, who held no relation- 
ship with the Israelites. The Mosaic enactments in 
regard to foreigners, or strangers, have reference to 
those who resided in the land among the Israelites, the 
number of whom was doubtless always large. (2 Chr. 
ii, 17). The laws regulating the political, social, and 
ecclesiastical status of the resident foreigner were 
characterized by a spirit of great liberality, (Ex. 
xxii, 21; Deut. x, 19), being based upon the fact that 
the Israelites themselves were once strangers in Egypt. 

Foreigners of all nationalities, including even the 
Canaanites, might, under certain conditions, be ad- 
mitted to the rights of citizenship, except the Moabites 
and Ammonite (Deut. xxiii, 3); and with these ex- 
ceptions they seem to have been eligible to all civil of- 
fices except that of king; (Deut. xvii, 15), though 
the later Jews excluded them from all. The resident 
foreigner was absolutely amenable to all the laws of 
the commonwealth. A foreigner who was a bondman 
was required to be circumcised (Ex. xii, 44); nor 
could a free foreigner partake of the Passover, and be 
regarded as a full citizen unless he submitted to the 
same rite. Circumcision made him an Israelite. (Ex* 
xii, 48). 

5. Concerning land and other property. The Israel- 



230 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

itish land-holder 'was regarded in the law only as the ten- 
ant of Jehovah, and could not sell his land in perpetuity. 
(Lev. xxv, 23). All land returned at the Jubilee to 
its original owner, and its market price was required 
to vary according to the length of time between the 
sale and the year of Jubilee. (Lev. xxv, 25-27). If 
a man should sell a dwelling house he was allowed by 
law the privilege of redeeming it in a year; if he did 
not redeem it in that time it was to be regarded as a 
sale in perpetuity, the houses of the Levites, however, 
being redeemable at any time. (Lev. xxv, 29-34). 

Land, houses, and other property, except clean ani- 
mals, devoted by vow to Jehovah, might be redeemed 
by the owner by paying one-h'fth more for it than the 
priest's estimated valuation. (Lev. xxvii). A man's 
property, on his death, descended by law to his sons, 
and in default of these, to his daughters, who in this 
case were required to marry in their own tribe. (Num. 
xxxvi, 6-9). If there were also no daughters, the 
property went to the brothers of the deceased, and if 
there were no brothers to the uncles of the deceased 
on the father's side, and lastly to the next of kin gen- 
erally. 

The eldest son of the deceased received a double 
portion. (Num. xxvii, 9-11; Deut. xxi, 17). In the 
case of a widow who did not marry a second time and 
died without children, the property reverted to her 
next of kin. The Mosaic law required a strict entail 
of land, testamentary dispositions being therefore su- 
perfluous. The Israelites, indeed, knew nothing about 
wills. If an heiress married, her property did not vest 
in her husband, but devolved upon her son, who took 
the name, not of his father, but of his mother's father. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 231 

6. Laws concerning debts, interest, etc. Bankers 
and sureties in the commercial sense are unknown in 
the Mosaic law. There was no statute of limitation, 
though no claim against an Israelite could be collected 
during the Sabbatical year. Interest on loans was for- 
bidden, though pledges of payment might be taken. 
The outer garment, if taken as a pledge, was required 
to be returned before sunset; the widow's garment and 
the family millstones could not be taken as pledges; 
the creditor was forbidden to enter the house of the 
one to whom he had loaned to claim his pledge, but 
should remain outside until the borrower brought it to 
him. (Deut. xv, xxiv). These laws were for the pur- 
pose of protecting the poor against extortion and op- 
pression. Unfortunately they were to a great extent 
annuled by the traditions of the elders, and the 
the kingdom of God as represented in the later Jewish 
theocracy ceased to be characterized by the spirit 
which was incorporated into its earliest code. 

7. Tax laws. The only regularly recurring taxes 
required by the original law of the theocracy were the 
Tithes, the First Fruits, and the Redemption money of 
the first born. The tithe tax was not instituted by 
Moses, but was only regulated by him, and accom- 
modated to the new order of things which he intro 
duced. It consisted of a tenth of all the produce of 
the land and of cattle, and was of the nature of an ec- 
clesiastical tax, payable annually, for the support of 
the Levites, who in turn paid a tenth of this for the 
support of the priests. Beyond this no provision was 
made for the payment of salaries. 

A second tithe was payable every third year, but 
whether it was a tenth of all or only of the nine-tenths 



OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



remaining from the first tithe, is not certain. This 
was expended in a great triennial feast of rejoicing in 
which all the people, including the Levites, joined, 
and which was intended to keep alive a sense of grati- 
tude to God. If a man wished to redeem any of this 
tithe he might do so by paying its value plus a fifth in 
money. (Lev. xxvii; Numb, xviii; Deut. xiv). 

The law also required each head of family to offer 
the first fruits of the vine, fruit trees, grain, honey, 
wool, etc. , as an expression of the gratitude which was 
due to God for the country which he had given them. 
(Ex. xviii, 19; Num. xv, 17-21; xviii, 11-13). These 
became the property of the priests. The second first 
fruits of Deut. xxvi, 1-11 were appropriated to the 
eucharistic sacrifices, and were consumed in the feasts 
which were made from them. When the basket of 
this second first fruit was brought to the Tabernacle, 
or Temple, the bringer was required to set it down be- 
fore the altar and return thanks in a loud voice to 

* 

God who had given to him and his fellow-country" 
man such a rich inheritance. The quantity of first- 
fruits thus required as tax was not specified in the law, 
only the minimum, one-sixtieth being stated. 

The Redemption money was derived thus: The first 
born, both of men and animals, were required by the 
law to be consecrated to God; the first born children 
were required by the law to be presented to a priest, 
and redeemed by the payment of a sum mentioned by 
the priest, but which could not exceed Hve shekels 
(Num. xviii, 14—16). The first born sons were by 
birth priests, and were to be thus redeemed from serv- 
ing as such. (Num. iii, 2 of.). The first born of cat- 
tle, goats, and sheep, from eight days to a year old? 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 233 

were to be offered in sacrifice, and the parts designated 
being burnt, the remainder belonged to the priests. 

(Num. xxiii, 17, 18; Lev. xxvii, 26). The first born 
of such animals as could not be offered in sacrifice 
were to be redeemed by a lamb or kid; or if not re- 
deemed its neck was to be broken, or it was to be val- 
ued by the priest and a sum paid for its redemption. 
(Lev. xxvii, 11-13). It was intended by these laws to 
keep the Israelites mindful of the preservation of their 
first born in Egypt. The various provisions for the 
poor may also be regarded as of the nature of tax laws. 
(Deut. xxiii, 24, 25; xxiv, 19-22; Lev. xix, 9, 10). 

§ 4. The Criminal Code. 

1. All forms of idolatary, acknowledgement of any 
god but Jehovah, witchcraft, false prophecy, blas- 
phemy, and Sabbath-breaking were regarded as trea- 
son, inasmuch as they were calculated to undermine 
the allegiance of the "people to their only king, Jeho- 
vah, and were punishable with death by stoning. This 
construction of such crimes was demanded by the theo- 
cratic nature of the government as the visible kingdom 
of God; and especially was it demanded at a time 
when even the covenant people were far from being 
rigid believers in the doctrine of monotheism. (See 
Ex. xxii, 18-20; Lev. xix, 31; xxi, 1-5; xxiv, 15, 1G; 
Num. xv, 32-36; Deut. xiii, xvii, 2-5; xviii, 9-22). 

2. The following other offenses are also mentioned 
in the law as being punishable with death. Disobe- 
dience to parents. (Ex. xxii, 15, 17). Adultery 
(Lev. xx, 10, etc). Unchastity before marriage, but 
detected afterward (Deut. xxii, 21). Unchastity of 
a betrothed woman with one not affianced to her. 



234 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



Deut. xxii, 23). Unchastity of a priest's daughter 
(Lev. xxi, 9). Kape of a married woman (Deut. xxii, 
25). Incestuous and unnatural connections (Lev. xx, 
11-16). Kidnapping (Deut. xxiv, 7). False witness, 
in cases where the person accused would be liable to 
capital punishment (Deut. xix, 16, 19). Eating sacri- 
fices in an unclean condition (Lev. xxii, 3, 4, 9). 
Touching holy things illegally (Num. iv, 15, 18, 20). 
Murder, without reprieve (Deut. xxi, 18-21). Death 
by negligence (Ex. xxi, 28-30). 

3. The following offenses were punishable by ex- 
clusion as one of the covenant people and hence from 
the rights of citizenship* : Neglect of Passover (Num. 
ix, 13); neglect of Atonement day (Lev. xxiii, 29); 
work done on atonement day. (Lev. xxiii, 30); an- 
ointing a stranger, or one not of the family of Aaron, 
with the holy oil (Lev. xxx, 33); unauthorized com- 

*In regard to tlie meaning of the phrase "cut off '*in the pas- 
sages above referred to there is considerable diversity of opinion 
among scholars. Michaelis, speaking of the import of Num. xv, 
30, says: " This passage the apostle Paul appears to have under- 
stood in reference to the punishment of death, and such seems 
to have been its traditionary exposition in the Jewish law, from 
his presupposing it as well known, that whoever was guilty of a 
deliberate breach of the ceremonial law of Moses must die with- 
out mercy." Michaelis thinks, however, that in some cases 
" cutting off" may have meant simply deprivation of civil rites 
and exile (Com. on the Laws of Moses. Art. 237). Jahn says: 
"The more recent Jewish .interpreters have understood by ex- 
cision from the people, excommunication; and have accordingly 
made three species of it. I. Excommunication in the slightest 
degree was separation from the synagogue, and the suspension 
of intercourse with all Jews, even with one's wife and domes- 
tics. A person who had exposed himself to excommunication 
of this sort was not allowed to approach another nearer than a 
distance of four cubits. This separation was continued for a 
period of thirty days; and in case the excommunicated person 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 28? 



pounding of the holy oil; eating leavened bread during 
the Passover (Ex. xii, 15, L9)^ eating fat of sacrifices 
(Lev. vii, 25); eating blood (Lev. vii, 27; viii, 14); 
eating the sacrifice of peace-offering on third day or 
later (Lev. xix, 5-8); making the holy incense for pri- 
vate use as a perfume (Ex. xxx, 38); neglect of purifi- 
cation (Num. xix, 13, 20); neglecting to bring offering 
to door of Tabernacle after slaying a beast for food. 
(Lev. xvii, 4, 9). As a rule the expression u to be cut 
off" most probably means to be declared an outlaw, 
or excluded from all part in the covenant. It was 
sometimes accompanied with the sentence of death. 
4. Other crimes were punished variously as fol- 
lows: (1.) In the case of accidental homicide the 
guilty person might escape the avenger of blood by 
flight to a city of refuge, residing there till the death 
of the high priest (Num. xxxv, 9-28). (2). Uncer- 
tain murder was required to be expiated by the sus- 

did not repent, the time might be doubled or tripled, even when 
the transgression by means of which it was incurred was of 
small consequence. II. The second degree of excommunication 
ia denominated cJterem, the curse, and was more severe in its ef- 
fects than that just mentioned. It was pronounced with impre- 
cations, in the presence of ten men and so thoroughly excluded 
the guilty person from all communication with his countrymen, 
that they were not allowed to sell him anything, even the neces- 
saries of life. III. The third degree of excommunication, which 
was more severe in its consequences than either of the preceding 
was denominated 8Aamata. It was a solemn and absolute exelu 
sion from all intercourse and communion with any other indi- 
viduals of the nation, and the criminal was left in the hands and 
to the (justice of God." Jahn also says that when God is intro- 
duced assaying: "I will cut him off from the people," the ex- 
pression means some event in Divine Providence which shall 
eventually terminate that person's family; but if the expression, 
" He shall be cut off from the people," be used, the punishment 
of stoning is meant. (Archaeology, § 258). 



236 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

pected person by a formal disavowal and sacrifice 
(Deut. xxi, 1-9). (3). Assault was punishable by 
lex talionis, or damages (Ex. xxi, 18, 19, 22-25; Lev. 
xxiv, 19, 20). (1). Seduction of betrothed virgin 
was to be compensated by marriage, and fine of fifty 
shekels, and without right of divorce; if the maiden's 
father refused to marry his daughter to the man the 
latter was required to pay a heavy fine. (Ex. xxii, 16, 
IT; Deut. xxh, 29). (5). Theft was punishable by 
requirement of double or four-fold restitution; a noc- 
turnal robber might be slain (Ex. xxii, 1-4) ; if the 
thief was unable to make restitution he was to be sold 
as a slave. (6). For trespass and injury of things lent 
a fair compensation was required to be made. (Ex. 
xxh, 5-15). (7). False testimony was punishable by 
lex talionis (Ex. xxiii, 1-3; Deut. xix, 16-21). (8). 
Slander of a wife's chastity subjected the husband to a 
fine of a hundred shekels, and chastisement not exceed- 
ing forty stripes, and loss of right of divorce (Deut. xxii 

17-19). 

§ 5. The Ceremonial Law. 

The centre of Israelitish worship, as prescribed by 
Moses, was the Tabernacle. Its ministers were the 
High Priest, the Priests, and the Levites. Its cere- 
monies consisted of the various altar offerings, the ob- 
servance of certain feasts and festivals, purifications, 
and certain prescribed ceremonies in connection with 
vows. 

1. The Tabernacle was necessary in order to give 
unity and coherency to the public worship; and public 
worship was necessary in order that there might be 
private worship and a corresponding morality. It was 
also a perpetual object lesson keeping the people mind- 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 337 



fill of certain fundamental truths of their religion. 
Moses was acquainted with the splendid temples of the 
Egyptians, but owing to the unsettled condition of the 
Israelites, the center of worship which he, under Di- 
vine guidance, had constructed for his people, was 
necessarily of a portable and more diminutive charac- 
ter. The Tabernacle proper was an oblong square, 
thirty cubits long from west to east and ten broad 
from north to south, this being the position in which it 
was always required to be placed. This enclosure was 
divided into two parts by a vail, separating the Holy 
Place from the Holy of Holies. The latter was ten 
cubits square, and contained the ark in which were 
placed the two tables of the law, Aaron's rod, and the 
pot of manna. The top of the ark was the "mercy 
seat," called kaj)j)oretk in Hebrew which means a 
covering/ on this the blood of the yearly atonement 
was sprinkled by the high priest, whereby the sins of 
the people were covered or concealed from the Divine 
eve. He looked on the atoning or covering blood, and 

■J DO' 

not on the sins. Over the ark at the two extremeties 
were two cherubim with their faces turned toward 
each other, and perhaps inclined somewhat toward the 
mercy seat. The Holy Place contained the golden 
candlestick which was placed at the end next to the 
vail, and the table of show bread on the 
right, and the altar of incense on the left, the en- 
trance being at the eastern end. The laver was out- 
side between the altar of burnt-offering and the en- 
trance, the whole being surrounded by a curtain wall 
five cubits high, one hundred long, and fifty broad. 
The enclosure between this and the Tabernacle was 
called the court. 



238 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

2. The Priests and Levites were the ministers of 
the Tabernacle. All the people had been called by 
Jehovah, and separated from other nations to a holy 
service. They were a nation of royal priests. But 
practically all could not serve as priests in the sense in 
which Aaron and his helpers did. The tribe of Levi 
was therefore chosen, but not for the purpose of to- 
tally depriving the people as a whole of their priestly 
character; for their world-redemptive mission rendered 
this priestly character inalienable. The tribe of Levi 
was chosen for special service as a reward, it seems, of 
their devotion on the occasion when the other Israel- 
ites worshipped the golden calf. Their general func- 
tion was to minister before Jehovah in his courts. Out 
of this tribe the family of Amram was chosen to per- 
form the functions of the priesthood, which devolved 
in the first place upon Aaron as the head of that house, 
he being the high priest and his two sons Ithamar and 
Eleazar the priests. The oldest living son of the 
high priests succeeded to that office on his father's 
death. In the formula of consecration the high priest 
alone was anointed, and hence he alone bore the dis- 
tinctive title of * ' the anointed priest, " the oil being 
poured both upon his head and also upon his garments. 
(Lev. viii, 7-12; 22-29; Psa. cxxx, 2). The anoint- 
ing of the common priest, was confined, it seems, to 
sprinkling their garments with the anointing oil. The 
distinction, however, between the anointings is not 
clear. (See Lev. iv, 3, 5, 16; vi, 15; Ex. xxviii, 41). 

The official attire of the high priest consisted of 
eight parts. (1) The breastplate, in which were fast- 
ened the twelve precious stones in four rows. These 
stones were probably the Urim and Thurnim. (2). 



77/ A MOS \IC PERIOD. 239 



Tlie ephod with its curious girdle. (3). 77*6' Ww^ ?\9fo 
oi the ephod. (4). The mitre, or aper turban, bear- 
ing the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord." (5), 
Tho girdle. (C>. The broiden / C0O#, or tunic, the 
material, as iu the case of tho girdle, being gold, blue, 
red, crimson, and tine white linen. (7). The breeches 
of linen covering the loins and thighs. (S). The ban- 
net, 01 turban, of linen. The four last were common 
to all priests. 

The fixed and invariable functions of the priests 
were: (1). To watch over the fire on the altar of 
burnt-oflering and prevent it from ever becoming ex- 
tinguished. (Lev. vi, 12). (2). To till the golden 
candlestick, or lamp, with oil (Lev. xxiv, 2). (3). 
To offer the morning and evening sacrifices on the 
altar of burnt-offering, each being accompanied with a 
meat-offering and a drink-offering. (Ex. xxix, 38-44). 
(4). A priest was required always to be at hand to do 
the prescribed service for any guilty, or penitent, or 
rejoicing, Israelite. (Lev. i, 5, 15; ii, 2, ( .>; iii, 1!; 
xii, 6; xiii, xiv, xv: Num. vi, 1-21). (5). To pro- 
nounce the special formula of benediction on the peo- 
ple at the great solemn assemblies. (Num. vi, 22-l'Ti. 
it',,. To serve, ex officio, as civil judges, and in some 
respects as public teachers. (Lev. x, 11; Dent, xxviii, 
l"t. (7). The duty peculiar to the high priest was 
that of entering the Holy of Holies on one (\:\y in the 
year, the great day of atonement, for the purpose of 
sprinkling the blood of the sin-offering on the mercy- 
seal and burning incense within the vail. 

The Hebrew priests, as was the custom generally 
among ancient nation-, performed their sacred services 
with naked feet, as a symbol of reverence and venera- 



240 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

tion. The custom is still in vogue in the East. The 
Hebrew priests were also required to be without bodily 
blemish, and according to the original law their services 
were limited by the ages of thirty and fifty. 

3. Offerings. The ordinary sacrifices were (1) 
The daily burnt-offering, the Sabbath burnt-offering 
(the daily doubled), the burnt-offerings at the festivals, 
at the consecration of priests, the purification of 
women, the removal of leprosy or other ceremonial 
uncleanness, and the votive burnt-offering. (Ex. xxix, 
38-42; Lev. i, vii, ix, xii, xiii, xiv, xxiii); also the 
free-will burnt-offering, which, however, was not re- 
quired by law, but was brought on occasions of special 
solemnity. (Num. vii). (2). The meat-offering and 
drink offering of flour, oil, frankincense, free from all 
leaven and seasoned with salt. (Lev. ii, vi, 14-23). 
(3). The peace-offering of the herd of the flock which 
might be either eucharistic, votive, or free-will. (Lev. 
iii, vii, 11-21). (4). The sin-offering and trespass- 
offering, (Lev. iv, v, vi). Sin-offerings seem to have 
been made for the priests, the congregation, and indi- 
viduals; trespass-offerings, for individuals only, and 
for special sins committed through ignorance of a law 
which should have been known. 

4. Laws intended to implant and develop the idea 
of holiness. 

(1) Laws requiring and regulating the dedication 
of first born and first fruit. (Ex. xxii, 29-30; Deut. 
xxvi, etc.) 

(2) Distinction between clean and unclean food. 
(Lev. xi; Deut. xiv. etc.) 

(3) Concerning purifications. (Lev. xii-xv; Deut. 
xxiii, 1-14). 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 241 

(4) Laws against disfigurement. (Lev. xix, 27; 
Deut. xiv, 1, etc.) 

(5) Against unnatural marriages and lusts. Lev. 
xviii; xx.) 

(6) Concerning the consecration of the priests. 
(Lev. viii; ix.) 

(7) Special qualifications and restrictions of priests. 
Lev. xxi; xxii, 1-9.) 

(8) Rights and authority of priests. (Deut. xvii, 
8-13; xviii, 1-6.) 

(9) Concerning the weekly Sabbath. (Ex. xx, 
9-11, etc). 

(10) The Sabbatical year. (Ex. xxiii, 10, 11, etc.) 

(11) The year of jubilee. (Lev. xxv, 8-16, etc.) 

(13) Concerning the Passover. (Lev. xxiii, 4-14, 
etc.) 

(14) The Feast of Tabernacles. (Lev. xxiii, 33-43). 

(15) The Feast of Trumpets. (Lev.' xxiii, 23, 25, 
etc.) 

(16) The Day of Atonement. (Lev. xxiii, 26-32, 
etc.) 



C THE TYPICAL AM) PROPHETICAL ASPECTS OF THE 

KINGDOM. 

§1. The Mosaic " Types." 

♦The Mosaic sacrifices and ritual had an anticipative 
significance. It was the intention of their Divine 
Author that they should look forward to the Christ of 
the New Testament. There would have been no 
Mosaic ritual had it not been the divine intention that 



242 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

there should be in the fullness of time a corresponding 
gospel. As were Aaron and his functions in the 
Mosaic system, so were Christ and his functions in the 
gospel system. So with other details. Consequently, 
when the gospel system comes into vogue, the Mosaic 
system becomes thereby annulled, and is of no further 
use, except as an ancient pattern whereby to test the 
accuracy of statements concerning gospel facts. The 
great sacrifice of the Cross is to be interpreted in the 
light of that significance which it was intended that 
the ancient Israelite should find in the Mosaic ritual, 
and not the latter in the light of the former. He who 
uses his knowledge of the gospel system for the pur- 
pose of tracing minute resemblances between it and 
the various details of the Mosaic system in reversing 
the process, and indulging an arbitrary and fanciful 
eisegesis which inserts its desired teaching into the text. 
The tracing of real analogies between the Mosaic and 
Christian system is worthy of the name of exegesis, 
but the vice versa process is not. The sun is not 
needed to illuminate a candle; but the candle is needed 
foi its own purpose before the sun rises. And to test 
the accuracy of our vision of an object, it may be nec- 
essary to compare it with our vision of it in the light 
of the candle while it was yet night. Or, to change 
the figure, a machine may sometimes be best studied 
in its diminutive model, but if the model must needs 
be understood by means of the machine, then we have 
no use for the model. 

In this sense the Mosaic institutes may be regarded 
as typical to us. But they were not typical to the 
contemporary Israelites, for whose benefit they were 
immediately designed. It is incumbent upon Biblical 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 243 

Theology to discuss these institutes only in their rela- 
tion to the Israelites themselves, while the systematic 
theologian may use them in their anticipative force for 
the purpose of ascertaining the corresponding parts of 
the New Testament system. The Israelites as a peo- 
ple probably at no period of their national history saw 
with accuracy of vision a well-defined and fully-de- 
veloped personal Christ, and a fully-developed christo- 
logical system, typified in the Mosaic ceremonial insti- 
tutes. Nor does it seem necessary or intended that 
they should. It requires an eye of considerable cul- 
ture to see the oak tree in the acorn; and the acorn 
may have a present value of its own, apart from the 
coming oak. The Israelite 4 , by virtue of his descend 
from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, was a mem- 
ber of the theocracy, or visible kingdom of God, but 
he attained to salvation in the spiritual and individual 
sense only by reason of his faith in the divine redemp- 
tive purpose, just as a contemporary Gentile might 
thus be saved even though he had no membership in 
the theocrac}-. Beyond this purpose of redemption 
the average Isreilte, especially, could scarcely have 
seen the historical particulars of the New Testament 
system in his ritual. What he did see, however, was 
truly a gospel, though the personal Christ through 
whom redemption was being wrought was most prob- 
ably to a great extent invisible. To the average Israel- 
ite Aaron terminated in himself; so did the sacrificial 
victim; so did every detail of the system terminate in 
itself, so far as the Israelite was concerned. Abraham 
saw Christ's day, as did others of keener vision than 
the average. But neither in the ritual, nor the priest- 
hood, nor beyond, did the Israelite see Christ himself 



244 OLD TE STAMEN STTUDIES. 

in his fullness. It was the fact of redemption, rather 
than the details of the process, which was seen. The 
Israelitish form of the kingdom of God was the histor- 
ical basis of the New Testament form; and the Mosaic 
institutes were constructed for the primary and imme- 
diate benefit of the Israelites of the Old, and second- 
arily and through them for us of the New Testament 
form of the same kingdom. 

But what was that original and immediate purpose ? 
We can reply here only in brief, and without reference 
to the various details of the system. As these were 
numerous, so also was the significance manifold and 
the whole system must be considered in its relation to 
the people and times for whom it was primarily in- 
tended, rather than in its relation to ourselves. The 
following points may be noticed: 

1. Idea of the Divine purity. One object of the 
system, especially of certain parts, was to convey to 
the mind of the Israelite a right idea of the purity of 
Jehovah, the only God. Such in part was the object 
of the distinction between the different classes of ani- 
mals as clean and unclean, only the former being ad- 
missible as sacrifices; such also in part -was the object 
in having a consecrated priest to offer the sacrifices, in- 
stead of permitting every man to offer them for him- 
self; such also was the object of the legal distinctions 
between the outer court of the sanctuary and the Holy 
Place, and between the Holy and Most Holy Place, 
the latter of which could be entered only by the high 
priest and by him only on one day of the year. This 
also was in part the object of the various ceremonial 
purifications. 

The nation was in its youth, and in many respects 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 345 

heathenish. The right idea of the Divine purity and 
holiness was lost, and had to he reformed by a new and 
elaborate system of object teaching. No one attribute 
of the Divine Being is more emphasized in the teach- 
ings of Moses, and indeed in the whole Old Testament 
than that of holiness, and a knowledge of none was 
more fundamentally essential to the progress of the 
people in the accomplishment of their redemptive mis- 
sion. 

2. The moral defilement <in<l guilt of the people. 
But not only was it sought to instill a right idea of the 
Divine purity and holiness, but also a recognition on 
the part of the people of their own moral defilement 
and guilt. The two objects would be accomplished in 
part by the same process and simultaneously. As the 
idea of their own moral pollution grew, "as compared 
with the immaculate standard of Jehovah's purity. SO 
would their need of spiritual purification be more and 
more recognized. The ritual of the altar and the 
divers washings connected with it (Ileb. ix, 10) were 
especially calculated to impress this lesson. Thus also 
would the Israelite be instructed in his need of pardon, 
the details of the ritual being addressed, some to his 
sense of guilt, others to his sense of pollution. These 
numerous rites were grievous to be borne, but neverthe- 
less were well adapted to the rude and ignorant people 
for whose benefit they were intended in the first place. 
The more enlightened and cultured a nation becomes 
the less its need of numerous rites and elaborate ritual. 
Little of this sort is expressly provided in the New 
Testament. 

3. Idea of 'the Divine justice. Another object in- 
tended to be accomplished was to implant in the mind 



246 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

of the Israelite the idea of the Divine j ustice, or of the 
demerit which accrued to himself by reason of his guilt 
and pollution. The prescribed penalties consequent 
upon the violated law were especially calculated to 
serve this purpose. The whole burnt-offering, and the 
sin and trespass-offerings were understood to be placa- 
tory or a sweet-smelling savor. The fact that the 
slain victim was for an express purpose consumed upon 
the altar would be a perpetual declaration to the Isra- 
elite of the blameworthiness of sin in the sight of Je- 
hovah. The victim, which was required to be a clean 
animal and an object of value to the offerer, was slain 
and burnt on the altar, whereby the sinner might 
plainly see that sin as personated in himself was some- 
thing which surely deserved to be punished. Jehovah 
was thereby* declared to be just and also at the same 
time merciful, for the sacrifice was not merely the 
symbolization of penalty which should be inflicted upon 
the sinner himself, but it was also a propitiation be- 
cause it was a token that the offerer shared Jehovah's 
intense abhorence of his sins. Being thus offered sin- 
cerely it became on the sinner's part an authorized plea 
for pardon. Being prescribed as such it was accepted 
as such, and thus it became an " atonement," or cov- 
ering, as the word means, whereby was concealed, so 
to speak, the sinner's sin from Jehovah's eye. Having 
learned that Jehovah was merciful, the Israelite would 
be encouraged to crave pardon for sins for which no 
sacrificial atonement was provided by law. In such 
cases, as murder, adultery, etc., the plea would be 
simply the sinner's own penitence and the Divine 
mercy, without any outward expression of the plea in 
sacrifice. 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 247 

Pardon cannot be granted unless it 18 craved, and it 
can be craved only as an expression of penitence on 
the Burner's part and as an act of mercy on Jehovah's 
part. But to crave it as act of Divine mercy is only 
another way of admitting the Divine justice 1 in the 
event the pardon is refused. In this case, and in this 
case only, is pardon possible; for sins that are actually 
expiated in their relation to the sinner do not also need 
to he pardoned. The expiation clears the account. 
The Israelite saw these things in the sacrificial system. 
A list of sins is expressly given in Lev. vi, 1-7 and iv 
13, in respect to which all the ends of expiation were 
accomplished, within the sphere at least of Israel's 
temporal relation to Jehovah as the recognized king of 
the theocracy . By the atonements thus provided and 
required by law, the Israelite would he kept perpetu- 
ally mindful of the fact that he reached the Divine 
favor in all cases on no basis of his personal merit 
whatsoever, hut on the ground of a pure Divine act of 
mercy, — which mercy, however, could he extended to 
the offender onlj on his recognition of the necessity of 
expiation; or in other words, by endorsing the sacri- 
fice as his own. and hence as in lieu of himself. To do 
this would he to penitently acknowledge his guilt and 
pollution, and also in turn the Divine justice, and 
therein- render pardon possible. But it would not !><• 
right to say that the Divine justice is satisfied by be- 
ing wreaked on the slain victim; it is really not ex- 
pended on anything, hnt i- satisfied or withheld by the 
sinner's thorough and sincere endorsement of all that 
the sacrifice symbolizes. And as the animal victim 
was to the Israelites of the Old Testament, bo is the 
Christ victim to US of the New. 



248 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

■A. TJ>e sentiment of gratitude. Another object 
aimed at was the preservation in the heart of the sen. 
timent of gratitude and hence of loving loyalty to Je- 
hovah. To this the great historical festivals of 
the Passover. Pentecost, and the Tabernacles, were 
eminently conducive. The meat-offering and peace- 
offering were also eucharistic. The preservation and 
perpetual periodical enkindlement of the sense of grat- 
itude would also tend to secure the people against the 
fashionable idolatry of their neighbors, and induce a 
spirit aDd habit of affectionate obedience to Jehovah. 
This, doubtless, was one of the fundamental objects 
aimed at by the whole system. It is safe for no man, 
however enlightened, to separate Irhnself wholly from 
all outward embodiment of his inward religion. As 
our modern church edifice, and the worship which it 
represents, are fundamental to our modern civilization, 
so were the Tabernacle and the Mosaic ritual to the 
Israelitish civilization: and this civilization did not 
tenninate in itself, but is the basis or germ of all Chris, 
tian civilizations. The Israelite, like every other man, 
must have his religious cultus, and being provided 
with one of his own. he would be less liable to adopt 
at any time the idolatrous and in other respects less 
perfect one of his neighbors. And, burdened with in- 
numerable observances as it was, which yet failed of 
themselves to give the conscience peace, the natural ef- 
fect would be a preparation to more keenly appreciate 
the libertv of the New Testament system, when in the 
fullness of time it should appear. 

5. The memorial or retrospective value. As the 
name of Jehovah, whether of recent or remote origin. 
Was the memorial name whereby the memory of the 



TIIE MOSAIC PERIOD. 

uld be t G bered into a 

covenant relation with the J- eople, so 

the sacrificial in part. ir. 

nificance. It was the out v. : the mem- 

ory of an anc f redeinp f faith 

in the promis tit of the one sacrificing. 

Without the out i the memorv 

and the faith both would h.v and 

there would have been no 1 sis 1 rfurtl. 
| edure. But the promis i which the sacri- 

looked wa- ever in nnbroken proc e ss of fulfillment, 
a redemption realized in its individual as - in the 

rience of the Israelite: and 1 
b me time in the future but now only 
hoped for. The Israelii 

tcry of the method, the mys incarnate, hut 

he had faith in the be lemptive purpose, to 

mory of which and to his faith in whi 

Btimony. His individual Redeemer 
- One who L . ssentially, already come. The 
heathen or: but in so far 

[in any relati mption, t 

were the - . »'ii the 1. g only < 

faint and vague hope, whereas the Israelii 

I — Gi *s i - ~ - mption. The 

heathen befiev aid without the encour- 

. and hence his sacrifice ha 
him no memorial value. 

And when Christ actually came, and made redemp- 
tion historic, the M - its memorial 
value was concerned, mi^ht have been continued in 
gue. In-tead, however, of pointing men backward 
the expressed divine purpose, or to "the Larub 



250 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES, 

slain from the foundation of the world," it might have 
pointed them backward to the Lamb slain in time. 
And it was necessary that there should be some means 
of doing this. But the Mosaic system had become 
needlessly cumbersome and burdensome, and imbedded 
in Jewish thought in relations quite apart from the his- 
toric Christ. For these reasons it would be both easier 
and better to institute a new memorial system than it 
would be to change the popular thought in regard to 
the old system, and adapt it to a new purpose. Hence, 
the institution of the ministry of the gospel, the rites 
of baptism, and the Lord's Supper, etc. The popular 
thought had veered from the original divine intention 
as to the old system, and the best way, if not the only 
way, whereby to correct the error, was to abrogate the 
old system. But the Apostle James, even regarding 
him for the moment as uninspired, was not wrong in sup- 
posing that certain features of the Mosaic system and 
the gospel plan of salvation might be retained side by 
side, provided men would only do so intelligently; for, 
after all, those under the two dispensations respectively 
who were saved at all were saved essentially in the 

same way. 

§2. The Star of Balaam. 

Another remarkable prophecy, or rather, series of 
prophecies, is that of the semi-heathen Balaam, found 
in Num. xxiii, 7-10, 20-24; xxiv, 5-9, 17-24. The 
whole episode of Balaam and Balak, recorded in chap- 
ters xii-xxiv, is peculiar in several respects. In the 
first place, the scene lies wholly outside of the camp 
of Israel, and wholly in that of the enemy. The Is- 
raelites knew nothing of much, at least, that was then 
taking place from the beginning to the end of the epi- 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. J»l 

sode, or from the tiino when Balak first sent to Messo- 
potamia for Balaam to the conclusion of the hitter's 
prophecy. If, therefore, these prophecies are to be 
studied and interpreted from the standpoint of Israel's 
recognized relation to them, the place of such study in 
our scheme evidently depends upon the time when Is- 
rael first became acquainted with the contents of the 
prophecies. 

Another peculiarity, growing out of the first, which 
must be mentioned here, is the parenthetical character 
of the record of the episode as it stands in the book of 
Numbers. We may evidently pass directly from ch. 
xxii, 1, to ch. xxv, without breaking in the least the 
narrative of the history of Israel. While the events 
recorded in the intervening section were occurring, the 
Israelites were quietly in their camps which they had 
recently ''pitched in the plains of Moab, on this side 
Jordan by Jericho' 1 (xxii, 1); and the; narrative of these 
events has no structural connection with the preceding 
and subsequent record. It is a parenthesis possessing 
literary characteristics wholly peculiar to itself. 
• But w t o cannot on thes? grounds infer anything con- 
cerning the date of its composition or its authorship, 
though as to order of time, it is evident that it occu- 
pies the right place in the record. The life of Moses 
was, at the most, within a few weeks of its close, his 
Ias1 public service being the destruction of the Midian- 
ites, the allies of Balak, a short time after the prophe- 
cies of Balaam were uttered. In the tents of the con- 
quered leaders of Moab and Midian, the Israelites 
doubtless learned the story of Balaam and his recent 
prophecies. So remarkable a testimonial was it of the 
present importance and future glory of Israel that 



252 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Moses, or Eleazer, or other divinely-guided hand 
doubtless immediately wrote it, as a kind of sa- 
cred drama, and inserted it in its proper place among 
the records of Israel. It was the testimonial of one 
whom they knew would have cursed them if he could; 
of one "whom all the peoples round about regarded as a 
man of no ordinary insight into things future, and one 
whom even kings delighted to honor and revere. 

Whatever may be said of the morality and doc- 
trinal status of the Israelites at this period of their 
history, they were intensely religious. They did 
not always believe in Jehovah, but they always 
believed in God (Elohim), and worshiped him, 
albeit sometimes in an impure way and under 
forbidden names. Taking such considerations as 
these into the estimate, and the additional facts that 
Balaam spoke under invisible constraint and in opposi- 
tion to his own interest, we may easily suppose that the 
Israelites would as readily believe his words in this in- 
stance as they had ever at any time believed the words 
of Moses himself. 

Nor is it to be regarded as without significance th%t 
in this narrative the name Jehovah and the name God 
(Elohim) are used interchangeably. So far as the effect 
upon the Israelites themselves is concerned, it does not 
matter whether we suppose that Balaam himself really 
used the Israelitish and covenant name of the Divine 
Being, or whether Moses, or Eleazer, in writing up the 
matter, put that name into his mouth, as being the 
equivalent of the one which Balaam did use. Balaam 
must have known God as the covenant God of Israel, 
or, in other words, as Jehovah; but whether so or not, 
the Israelites themselves would know very well from 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 253 



this interchange of the names that if any God at all 
authorized Balaam to speak — and they would not doubt 
that one did — it must have been their God, Jehovah; 
and this would be the conclusion even of those who 
might not believe that Jehovah was the only God. 
This circumstance, therefore, would only secure the 
readier assent of the Israelites to the wondrous words 
of Balaam, the enemy's great prophet, and yet in no 
way misrepresent the essential facts. At the time 
however, when the Israelites had reached this stage of 
their history, they were very well advertised through- 
out the surrounding nations, and the fame of the name 
Jehovah doubtless went with their fame. Both Balaam 
and Balak must have been well acquainted with it, as 
we see that Rahab, the harlot, of Jericho, was, shortly 
after this. (Josh, ii, lOf.) And as Balaam, whether 
addressing Balak or Balak's messenger, was speaking 
of the Israelites, it was natural and in accordance with 
custom that he should use the Israelitish name of God, 
or the name of the Israelitish God, according as we 
suppose him to have been v a believer in one or many 
gods. # 

Balaam spoke under the impulsion of the Holy 
Spirit, just as did the inspired prophets of a later day, 
though he spoke unwittingly, and in opposition to his 
previous selfish purpose. Our question here is, not 
what larger meaning we mav sec in his words, in the 
light of subsequent history and revelation, but, what 
did the Israelites of that day see in them. There is 
evidently something in prophecy and revelation gener- 
erally, which those to whom it was primarily addres 
did not and could not perceive. It is like one endeav- 
oring to read a book which is quite beyond his present 



254 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

advancement, and yet out of which he may obtain 
much. It is not to be denied that if God revealed at 
divers times and in divers manners, the contents of the 
revelations are to be looked at in the first place in the 
light of the present of that generation to which they 
were first made. 

The words of Balaam were undoubtedly Messianic, 
as all interpreters, except the purely rationalistic ad- 
mit, but the Messiah whom the Israelites saw in them 
was far from being in all respects the Messiah of the 
New Testament. The Star (ver. 17) was to them not 
so much a person as it was dominion. The person 
whom they saw in the prophecy was rather themselves 
projected in vision on the horizon of the future. The 
Sceptre, in like manner, was only another name for 
dominion, pointing them to no particular monarch in 
the future, but only to themselves as exercising sover- 
eignty over all their enemies; these enemies being na 
turally represented, as Moab, Edom, and Amalek, who 
were then the most prominent in their hostility to Is- 
rael. The prophecy unfolds not only to us, it unfolded 
to the Israelites themselves, who first found it in the 
conquered tents of Moab, " the royal side " of the rela- 
tion of the Israelites to the nations, and the imagery 
employed to do this is identical with that employed by 
both prior and subsequent prophets and by peoples of 
the orient generally. And what was true of Israel in 
this respect was true also of Israel's King Messiah 

So this view of the prophecy by no means causes it 
to lose its significance in relation to the Divine purpose 
of redemption. It was faith in this Divine purpose, 
and in themselves as its first human embodiment and 
agent, and the allegiance to Jehovah which all this im- 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 255 

plied, that constituted to them the plan of salvation. 
The Israelites in their organized, or national, capacity, 
were the kingdom of God; and they so regarded them- 
selves, however gross may have been their concep- 
tions of the nature and significance of this kingdom. 
Their victories were, nevertheless, the victories of the 
kingdom of God, successive steps in the process of re- 
ducing all other kingdoms to subjection under the same 
Sceptre. At a later day, when Israel also had a king, 
the personal King Messiah himself became visible to 
them in prophecy. But for the present, on the Mount- 
ains of Moab, flushed with victory over Bashan and 
the Amorites, and yet in conflict with their enemies, 
what message would be more opportune than the one 
setting forth Israel's royal work of subjugation and do- 
minion? There is still an Israel that still needs the 
message oft repeated. 

§ 3. The Prophet Promised. 

The kingdom of God had been formally provided 
with an organized priesthood whose function, it had 
been expressly declared, should be perpetual in the line 
of Phinehas of the family of Aaron. (Num. xxv, 12, 
13 ) u Therefore say, Lo, I give unto him my cove- 
nant of peace; and it shall be unto him, and to his seed 
after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood, 
because he was jealous for his God, and made atone- 
ment for the children of Israel." The words find their 
highest fulfillment in the priesthood of the Saviour of 
mankind, though it is not probable that the Israelites 
saw in them more than the majority of Christians 
have seen in them since, — the mere bestowment of 
perpetual honor upon Phinehas and his house because 



256 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

of his extraordinary zeal in defense of the honor of 
Jehovah. 

If in the Mosaic polity no order of kings is expressly 
provided, we do have among the very last words of 
Moses, and in the same address in which the priest- 
hood is presupposed, a distinct presage of such an order 
(Deut. xvii, 14-20) — a passage that bears upon its very 
surface evidence that it is not the interpolation of a 
later writer. The Mosaic institutions had no greater 
affinity for one special form of civil government than 
for another, being sufficiently elastic to adapt them- 
selves, within certain limits, to any form. But it 
seems evident, especially in view of all the historical 
surroundings, that the idea and function of Israel as 
the kingdom of God would admit of easiest develop- 
ment under the monarchical form of government. The 
Israelites were to be more and more clearly revealed 
to themselves as the kingdom of God, and a Messiah 
was to be more and more clearly revealed unto them 
in his capacity of king of that kingdom. These reve- 
lations could be understood only in so far as they were 
founded upon an historical basis, the outgrowth of the 
Israelite's own experience and observation — the visible 
king being the object lesson whereby was set forth to 
them the One yet invisible. Accordingly the order of 
things was anticipated by Moses, and instructions, 
such as the present surroundings and condition of the 
people would enable them to understand, were laid 
down for their guidance. 

Finally, and in the same farewell address of Moses, 
the prophet-order is provided (Deut. xviii, 15-19). 
' ' According to all that thou didst ask from Jehovah, 
thy God, in Horeb, in the day of the assembly, saying, 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 257 

i I cannot again hear the voice of Jehovah, my God, 
and this great fire I cannot see again, lest I die ' ; and 
Jehovah said unto me, k They have done well in what 
they have spoken. A prophet will I raise up for them 
from the midst of their brethren, like unto them ; and 
I will give my words into his mouth, and he will speak 
unto them all that I charge him. And it will come to 
pass that whosoever will not hearken unto my words 
which he will speak in my name, I will require it of 
him.'" 

There was undoubtedly a larger meaning in this 
message than was actually conveyed to the mind of the 
Israelite who heard it from the mouth of Moses. He 
would understand from it, and rightly, that Moses, 
though soon to be taken from them, should have a suc- 
cessor ; that the organization of the kingdom of God 
was not to find its completion in its priesthood and 
civil government; that there should continue to be a 
recognized mediatorship between the members of the 
kingdom and Jehovah himself, even as Moses had been 
such mediator during the forty years of his adminis- 
tration, and especially at Sinai; and that that mediator 
would be the medium through whom special instruc- 
tion should be communicated to them from time to 
time, and which could not be anticipated at the outset 
once for all. Unto him should the people hearken. 
The assurance thus granted them would not only, in 
some measure, reconcile them to the death of their 
great spiritual leader, but would especially guard them 
against all forms of necromancy and soothsaying, such 
as were resorted to by the nations round about them, 
for the purpose of obtaining insight into the future or 
information in matters beyond the grasp of the ordi- 



258 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



nary human faculties. The people would evidently 
interpret the message, in the light of the words spoken 
a few moments before (verses 10-14), and would evi- 
dently see that the promise of a prophet- successor of 
Moses was meant, in part at least, to secure them 
against the treasonable practices there mentioned, — 
practices, the oftener resorted to the more the minds 
and hearts of the people would be necessarily withdrawn 
from Jehovah. If any man lacks wisdom let him 
seek it of Jehovah through Jehovah's authorized 
speaker, was probably the practical burden of the 
message as heard by the Israelites. And if this 
Speaker should not be hearkened unto by the people 
Jehovah would require it of them by raising up for a 
time no prophet among them. He would leave them 
to their own evil, which in due time would bring its 
punishment. 

Thus understood, the message of Moses would pre- 
pare the people to see even in Joshua, not merely a 
military and civil leader, but also a spiritual guide and 
mediator in special emergencies. So also of Samuel, 
Nathan, Elijah, and all the rest of the prophets of 
Jehovah, in order to test the Divine call of whom in- 
fallible criteria were furnished in the same message 
(verses 20-22). The people were used to prophets; 
but the prophets of that order which is here cleansed 
of its heathen impurities, and in the words of Moses, 
stamped with the Divine sanction, were to deliver no 
false messages and resort to no tricks of necromancy 
or other form of divination. 

But it by no means follows that the words do not re- 
fer eminently to Christ, the Prophet greater than Mo- 
ses. As the people advanced through the centuries, 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. 259 

and increased in knowledge and wisdom, it came to be 
recognized that the prophet-order as such, that no one 
prophet hitherto, had exhausted the meaning of the 
message of Moses. The prophet-order would be mean- 
ingless and valueless if one Prophet were not included 
in it. The series of prophets would be without signifi- 
cance if the last number of the series were omitted. 
Hence the message found its highest fulfillment in him 
who was the truest prophet of all, and whom Moses 
himself may have seen from the beginning. Our Lord 
expressly declares that Moses wrote of him (Jno. v, 
15—17); but whether he did so consciously or uncon- 
sciously, or with an understanding of the details con- 
cerning Christ's person and office, we cannot know 
with certainty. There may be more in the inspired 
words of the speaker than there was in the mind or 
understanding of the speaker or writer. Our Lord in 
making this declaration cannot be supposed to have 
reference to any other words of Moses than this pas- 
sage, for this is the only place in which he, speaking 
in his own person, makes any prediction of the kind. 
In the New Testament times the Messianic interpreta- 
tion of the passage was the one generally accredited by 
both Jews, Samaritans, and Christians. 



DIVISION III. 
Period of the Prophets. 

Definition. 

As Mosaism dealt with the objective development of the Old 
Testament religion as exhibited in the historical and doctrinal 
contents of the Pentateuch, so prophetism deals with the same 
subject as exhibited in the historical and prophetical contents 
from the entrance into Canaan to the close of the Old Testament 
revelation. By objective development is still to be understood 
the growth to which the religion of Israel, considered in its to- 
tality, attained from age to age by reason of revelations com- 
municated to Israel from without, as distinguished from the sub- 
jective development due to the exercise, under the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit, of the Israelite's own natural capabilities of 
thought. Prophetism, therefore, as well as Mosaism, in this 
narrower and stricter sense, excludes the inspired meditations of 
the so-called Wisdom books (Job, Ecclesiastes, etc.), the con- 
tents of which must be discussed apart by themselves as a par- 
allel line of religious growth. Prophetism is both the historical 
and doctrinal continuation and fulfillment of the earlier revela- 
tion, securing the observance by the people to whom it was im- 
mediately addressed of the precepts laid down in the Pentateuch, 
and developing at the same time its doctrinal contents, and add- 
ing thereto essentially new elements. 

Prophetism, like Mosaism, must be treated both in its histori- 
cal and doctrinal aspects, as well as in its nature and peculiar 
characteristics. 

(260) 



PERIOD OF THE PU0PI1ETS. 381 



Chapter 1. 



PROPHETISM HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 

§ 1. Civil and Religious Characteristics of this 

Period. 

1. The Times of the Judges. The prospects 
opened up for Israel by the legislation of Moses, and 
the initial successes of Joshua, were not fully realized. 
''The great design was imperfectly executed.'' The 
period of the judges, extending over a period of more 
than three hundred years, is characterized by a series 
of six recorded apostasies, of longer or shorter dura- 
tion, from the worship of Jehovah as the only God, 
and the adoption of the nature worship of the Canaan- 
ites; these intervals of apostacy being followed by 
periods of chastisement in the form of oppressions by 
the heathen nations, and these in turn by seasons of 
repentance, and prayer to Jehovah again, and deliver- 
ance through judges raised up for the purpose. The 
following points may here be noticed: 

(1). The remnant of unconquered Canaan ites left 
by Joshua in the land, and the Divine overruling 
therein (Judges ii, 19-23; iii, 1-4). They were as 
thorns in the sides of the Israelites, and their gods 
were a snare unto them; they became instruments of 
chastisement which Jehovah used when the people dis- 
obeyed him. 

(2). The Canaanite Nature-ioorship. The religion 
of the Canaanites was a form of Pantheism. It re- 
garded Deity as identical with the generating, pre- 



262 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

serving, and destroying power of nature. Baal, 
Astarte, Dagon, etc., were the different manifestations 
of this power of nature personified and worshipped in 
bloody and lewd forms. The Mosaic religion on the 
other hand, regarded the Deity as entirely distinguished 
from nature, infinitely exalted above it, almighty and 
omnipresent in it, and employing it as an instrument 
of his will. It was extremely essential that Israel 
should be kept in, and be nurtured in, this faith. 
Hence the significance, and oflensiveness to Jehovah, 
of Israel's apostacies. 

(3). The office of the Judges. This was not of a 
permanent character. The Judges, or Shophetim, 
were raised up from time to time by Jehovah, in cases 
of great affliction, for the purpose of delivering the peo- 
ple from their enemies (Judg. ii, 16), and usually re- 
tained, after their task had been performed, a more or 
less definitely recognized judicial and magistratic power 
as long as they lived. Their position and duties were 
allied to those of the prophets — they were prophets in 
action. During this whole period of the judges the 
people were to a great extent taught by events simply. 
4 ' The lessons of the nation were communicated by 
means of facts, disaster following idolatry, and pros- 
perity coming after the surrender of idols, were never 
far from their experience. They were taught most 
impressively that the way of the transgressors is hard, 
but that the fear of God is the highway to blessing. " 
(Blackie.) 

(4). But though the lapses of the people into idol- 
atry were frequent, clearly showing that a pure, spirit 
ual worship is distasteful to the natural heart, and that 
men are partial to a religion which reaches them 



PERIOD OF TEE PROPHETS. 

through images and symbols, rather than to be brought 
14 into heart-to-heart contact with the unseen God;" 
yet, in order to duly appreciate the character of the 
times it should be remembered that these periods of 
apostacy were followed by times of repose, faithfulness, 
and comparative prosperity, extending in some in- 
stances over intervals of forty and even eighty years. 
During these times of peace, the people, for the most 
part, lived a simple, quiet, unambitious, country life, 
having but little, and aspiring to little, of the arts and 
refinements of modern civilization. Music, and poetry, 
and fancy needle-work were, however, not altogether 
neglected (Judges v, 1-31). But the stories of Micah, 
and of the tragedy of Gibeah, of Abimilech's murders, 
and of Eli's polluted sons, illustrate the irregularities, 
of worship, and brutal state of morals which prevailed 
to a greater or less extent even in times of peace (Ch. 
ix, xvii, xix; 1 Sam. iii, 11-14). 

2. The period of Samuel and the undivided king- 
dom is characterized chiefly by 

(1). The restoration by Samuel of the theocratic 
unity of the tribes which had been greatly weakened 
by the civil and religious irregularities of the times of 
the judges. The central national worship was revived, 
and the tribes were brought back to a recognition of 
the fact that they were the one covenant t )eople of 
Jehovah. 

(2). The rise of prophecy and the organization by 
Samuel of schools of prophets (1 Sam. xix, 18; 2 
Kings ii, 3-5; iv, 38). The prophetic office now ac- 
quired a permanent character, and prophecy, instead 
of the priesthood, became the conscience of the state. 

{3). The establishment of the monarchy and the 



264 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

royal dignity; Jehovah's design in this being, first , to 
furnish the nation with a visible bond and point of 
union and a head, and, second^ to enable the people to 
more adequately apprehend and appreciate further 
revelations concerning the Messiah in his royal char- 
acter. The kingdom and the king were to become 
u object lessons " to the people in relation to the Mes- 
sianic kingdom and king. 

3. The period from the division of the kingdom, at 
the beginning of B-ehoboam's reign, to the close of the 
canon, is characterized by 

(1). The chronic hostility between the kingdom of 
Judah and the kingdom of Israel, until the latter was 
finally overthrown forever by the Assyrian power. 

(2). The establishment of the worship of Jehovah 
in high places, which was a willful and sinful renewal 
of the Patriarchal form wholly inconsistent with the 
covenant oneness of the people and the appointed cen- 
tralized national worship. The worship in high places 
was appropriate in the earliest ages, for the elevation, 
or hill, is an altar of nature, and a fixed place for the 
worship of the God of nature, if not of grace; but in 
this more advanced period, when the kingdom of God 
had been already further developed, and grace was be- 
coming more and more paramount to nature, such 
worship was a sinful opposition to the Divinely ap- 
pointed worship at the tabernacle and the temple. It 
was also a rapid step toward the nature worship of the 
heathens round about who had their altars in the high 
places and the groves. 

(3). By the establishment of idolatrous calf wor- 
ship in the kingdom of Israel, the political object of 
which was to prevent the people from going to the temple 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 265 

in Jerusalem to worship, and thereby widen the breech 
between Israel and Judah. The result was a remark- 
able defection of both kings and people from Jehovah. 

(4). By the increased number and influence of the 
prophets, and the great courage and holy zeal with 
which they endeavored to counteract the untheo- 
cratic degeneracy of kings and people, this degeneracy 
increasing more and more, however, until it culminated 
first in the Assyrian exile of Israel, and subsequently 
in the Babylonian captivity of Judah, and the over- 
throw of Jerusalem and the temple. 

(5). By the new phase which prophecy assumed 
after the time of Elijah and Elisha. Before, and in- 
cluding, their day it was rather simply a successor of 
Moses, being characterized as one may readily sec, 
mainly by zeal for the law and the right worship of 
Jehovah; afterwards, however, while it by no means 
neglects the law and the true worship, it appears 
rather as the Harbinger of Christ. The conception of 
the Messiah became fully distinct and acquired a com- 
plete form. The kingdom of David should pass away, 
but the prophets after Elisha delight to dwell upon it 
as the symbol of a Kingdom which should never pass 
away. The stock of David, it was forseen, should be- 
come a decayed stump, but from it should spring a 
king who should reign forever. The current form of 
worship should also cease, but it was the symbol of a 
worship which should never cease. 

(6). By the rigid monotheism of the exile and post- 
exilic periods as contrasted with the former persistent 
idolatrous tendency: also the use during the captivity 
of the synagogue worship, or "little sanctuaries'' 
(Ezek. xi, 16). 



266 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

§ 2. The Rise of the Prophetical Order. 

1. The prophetic function was never a new thing 
to the Hebrew, nor indeed to any people even outside 
of the sphere of the Biblical revelation. Heathenism 
has always abounded in men and women who have 
been recognized by their contemporaries, if not by pos- 
terity, as prophets. 

The psychological explanation of this historical fact 
is not far to seek. The instinctive desire of all men to 
see the invisible and know the future predisposes them 
in the first place to accept prophetic messages, apart 
from any evidences whatsoever of their truth. This is 
the psychological basis of prophecy, without which it 
would not be possible for man to be reached through 
prophecy. And so there were prophets and prophecies 
within the sphere of revelation from the beginning. 
Adam was a prophet, being made one by his accept- 
ance immediately from God of the information concern, 
ing future redemption, as stated in Gen. iii, 15. Enoch 
also was a prophet, and Noah, Abraham, and Jacob. 
The Israelites never at any time regarded it as strange 
that these patriarchs should have seen the invisible 
and the future, and that men should have believed 
their messages. Nor is it strange to us. It would 
have been far the greater wonder had there been no 
prophets. When the dying Jacob foretells the future 
of his sons they accept his words as a matter of course, 
and without questioning; though their truth could 
actually be made known only by their fulfillment 
(Deut. xviii, 21, 22). 

2. The Israelites of the time of Moses were familiar 
with the word nabi (prophet), and of course with that 
which the word designated. He himself was one; and 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS 267 



when he said, "The Lord thy God will raise up unto 
thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, 
like unto me," they understood what it was that was 
to be raised up, though they may not have clearly 
understood whom. They knew that prophecy as a func- 
tion was not to cease with Moses, though the w r ords 
were doubtless not meant to be wholly restricted to 
any particular prophet, or to formally provide for the 
organization, or establishment, of any order or class of 
spiritual officers that should be called prophets. For 
this there was no express provision in the Mosaic con- 
stitution, and there could in the very nature of the case 
have been none without putting the constitution, so 
far, in advance of the circumstances of the people. 
The prophet must as yet continue to be as he had 
hitherto been, only an individual and not an institution 
or official class. The institution, like the monarchical 
form of government, must be a natural outgrowth of 
later circumstances, otherwise there would be no pop- 
ular want met and it could not flourish. 

3. But to what historical circumstances was the or- 
ganization of an order of prophets immediately due? 
We must find the answer to the question partly in that 
which the priesthood failed to do, and partly in that 
which the order of prophets did accomplish. 

To the sacerdotal order was originally entrusted the 
function of teacher and governor of the people in mat- 
ters spiritual and ecclesiastical. Doubtless they also 
were originally the physicians and teachers of the se- 
cular schools, in so far as there w r ere any. But they 
did not long adequately fulfill the task assigned them. 
With neglect of duty and corrupt practices the priest- 
hood was soon reduced to a low condition; and the 



268 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

people sank with it. The frequent defections of the 
people, during the time of the judges, from their alle- 
giance to Jehovah presuppose a sad want of spiritual 
vitality and energy on the part of the priests. The gov. 
ernment being a sort of religio-political institution the 
priests were a part of it, and hence they were not only 
in the world, but were also of the world, and both 
priests and people glided rapidly into dark times. 

Then it was that Samuel was raised up. He seems 
to have been a Levite incorporated into the tribe of 
Ephraim (1 Sam. i; 1 Chron. vi, 22, 23). He was a 
prophet both in function and in office, and in order 
that his influence might be recognized and felt as such, 
it was not necessary that stress should be laid upon his 
tribal descent. It was not a strange thing to the peo- 
ple that he should speak with authority on other 
ground than his connection with the priestly tribe. He 
established the Prophetical Order, in which sense he 
came to be regarded as the first of the prophets (Acts 
iii, 24). After him the succession was unbroken. He 
seems to have been the founder of the prophetical 
school (1 Sam. xix, 20), which were similar in consti- 
tution and purpose to our theological institutions. 
The disciples of these schools studied music, and poetry, 
and the law (1 Sam. x, 5, 10; 1 Chron. xxv, 1, 6). 
They became the teachers of the people, the annalists 
and historians, the physicians, the conservators of pa- 
triotism, morals, and spiritual religion, and the coun- 
sellors of kings, not only in private but also in public 
matters, which the true prophet recognized as being 
affairs of the kingdom of God. They wore a kind of 
uniform, and could be recognized as prophets at sight 
(2 Kings i, 8). They had nothing to do with the func- 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS 269 



tions of the priests, but were even more influential than 
the priests (Jer. ii, 8; iv, 9; v, 31, etc.) Kings both 
respected and feared them. They were not only a 
powerful but also a numerous class. Obadiah con- 
cealed one hundred at a time from the wrath of Jeze- 
bel, an unknown number having already been cut off by 
her. Ahab, king of Israel, gathered together four hun- 
dred prophets of the Lord, and there was doubtless a 
large number in both Israel and Judah in quieter times. 
But not all who belonged to the prophetic order were 
tide prophets possessed of the prophetic gift. The 
majority even of the Jehovah-prophets, were doubtless 
without the gift, and were prophets only in respect to 
education and class-feeling. Nor was there always 
agreement among them, so far, indeed, did some differ 
from others in their views and teachings as justly to 
entitle them to be called " false " prophets. The con- 
dition of the government and of the people was gener- 
ally such as to call forth much difference of opinion as 
to matters both of public policy and private morals. 
It is scarcely to be supposed, however, that the pro- 
phets who stood in such persistent opposition to Je- 
hovah, for example (Ch. xxvii, 9, 16, etc.), werethereby 
standing in consciously wicked opposition to Jehovah. 
It was to some extent, at least, a difference of opinion. 
They were the optimists, as they thought themselves. 
Matters, in their opinion, were not going to the bad, 
as Jeremiah so dolefully and persistently asserted; :i- 
witnessed to the contrary the vigorous reform measures 
of Josiah and Hezekiah. Were not the priests still 
active in their ministrations ? Were not the daily s.ic 
rafices still offered ? And was the temple service ever 
so magnificent as now i 



270 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

But however honest in their views some of these 
false prophets may have been, they were nevertheless 
guilty, and the mass of them fearfully corrupt (Jer. 
vi, 13; viii, 10; xiv, 13-16; xxiii, 1-40), and as they 
prophecied in harmony with the natural tendency of the 
people, they were not lacking in influence enough to 
lead the nation to ruin. Their words were the off- 
spring of their wishes, and their predictions were at 
the most only forecastings, and only by the outcome 
could the false be distinguished from the true. Though 
all claimed to be prophets, comparatively few of the 
prophetic order were inspired; though some priests and 
others, who were not formally members of the order, 
were possessed of this prophetic gift. The whole num- 
ber making up the inspired list from the close of Solo- 
mon's reign to the time of Malachi does not exceed 
thirty, and extends over a period of about five hundred 
and fifty years. The other seers, or prophets, "or 
teachers in Israel," were doubtless in no respect supe- 
rior in endowments or acquirements to our modern 
clergy, and doubtless the majority of them were in- 
ferior to them in morals. It is probable that even the 
thirty, who are mentioned as having been inspired, 
were not permanently endowed with the spirit of in- 
spiration. "The word of the Lord" came to them at 
such times as he saw it was wise and needful thus to 
communicate with them. Notwithstanding the class was 
numerous, it would seem, therefore, after all, to have 
been a small minority, especially for so long a period 
and so stiff-necked a people. It was a small number, 
even after making due allowance for those who, like 
Elijah and Elisha, wrote nothing, and for the still 
larger number whose names are not mentioned. Proph. 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 271 

etical colleges in those days could make neither heart 
nor brains. And as for supernatural endowment, we 
reverently think that God was much more likely to in- 
spire a man who had a basis of natural gifts with which 
to begin. Not every young Hebrew who attended the 
prophetical schools, and had the diploma, and wore 
the uniform of the order, was capable of being in- 
spired. The Elijahs, Isaiahs, and Jeremiahs, if dis- 
tributed evenly along the course of prophetic history 
would scarcely furnish two for each century. But 
these were enough. Not many generals are needed. 
There have not been many Savonarolas and Luthers. 
Samuel stood alone in his day. And the ministry of 
the prophets was not a failure. Neither as a protest, 
nor as a prophecy, did it die when the prophet died. 

4. But it was not the duty of the prophetic class 
whether inspired or uninspired merely to teach and 
preach, protest and prophecy. It became a part of 
their function, and a very important part, to make a 
record of the Divine utterances, and thus provide for 
their permanent existence; and in doing this they were 
guarded by the Holy Spirit from error. It is probable 
that not only the prophetical books strictly so-called, 
but also the historical books, were written bvmen who 
belonged to the prophetic order; so that the historical 
books in this sense also may be called books of the 
prophets, as they actually arc called in the Hebrew 
Bibles. The written prophecies, in the narrower sense 
of the term, are records, whether made by the men 
who originally spoke them or not, of the revelation- of 
Jehovah to the men selected by him to make known 
his will to his chosen people. And these prophecies 
were not merely of local and temporary value, and 



272 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

were not designed by their divine Author so to be. 
The will of God is the same, under the same circum- 
stances, in all ages and nations; and, besides this, the 
Jew as well as the Christian, of all subsequent times, 
may see in the fulfillment of predictions which occur 
in the history of prophecy a proof that the Bible is in 
all respects what it pretends to be. 

§ 3. Periods of Biblical Prophecy. 

The first period extends from Adam to Samuel, and 
includes the antedeluvian, patriarchal, and Mosaic pre- 
ludes of the brighter day and has been briefly discussed 
in the preceding section. These were only sporadic, or 
occasional, instances of the exercise of the prophetic 
function, and occurred only at intervals of centuries. 
The characteristic feature of the special prophecy of 
this earliest period, as compared with the later, is that 
of revelation as contrasted with inspiration; that is, in 
in the former the Lord spake to man, while in the lat- 
ter he spake through man. Beyond this, so far as the 
human speaker himself was concerned, prophecy was 
merely a private utterance, and in the estimation of 
the people generally, carried with it no greater weight 
than the wisdom of an oriental patriarch was able to 
impart to it; whereas, the prophecy of subsequent 
periods had the weight rather of official utterance. 

The following classification of post-Davidic prophets 
is substantially the one proposed by Van Til, in the 
early part of the eighteenth century. It is naturally 
suggested by the history of the times, and is followed 
in the main by writers generally: 

1. The prophets of Judah and Israel to the time of 
the overthrow of the latter, B. C, 721. 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 273 

2. The prophets of Judah from the overthrow of 
Israel to the final overthrow of Judah and Jerusalem 
by Nebuchadnezzar, B. C., 586. 

3. The prophets of the captivity, B. C, 5S6-516. 

4. The prophets of the restoration. 

The line of separation between these periods cannot 
be rigidly drawn, as in each case one period more or 
less overlaps another. Isaiah, for example, prophecied, 
both before and after the overthrow of Israel, and Jer- 
emiah both before and after the overthrow of Judah 
and Jerusalem. Orelli prefers to find the epochs, or 
dividing points, outside of the history of the chosen 
people, and arranges as follows: 

1. The prophets of the pre-Assyrian age, — Elijah, 
Elisha, Obadiah, Joel. 

2. The prophets of the Assyrian age in the north- 
ern kingdom, — Amos, Hosea, Zechariah ix-xi. 

3. The prophets of the Assyrian age in the south- 
ern kingdom, — Isaiah, i, xxxix, Micah, Nahum. 

4. The prophets of the Decline, or Chaldean period, 
— Zephaniah, Habakuk, Jeremiah, Zechariah, xii-xiv. 

5. The prophets of the Exile, — Ezekiel, Isaiah, 
xl-lxvi. 

6. The prophets after the exile, or the Persian 
period, — Haggai, Zechariah, i-viii, Malachi, Daniel's 
Apocalypse. 

The chronological place of several of the prophets 
and prophecies is a matter of unsettled debate among 
writers. As this, however, is not the place to discuss 
the subject, we must simply assume, as we have occa- 
sion, what seems to be the best conclusions of histori- 
cal criticism, and arrange the results of our study ac- 
cordingly, — saying only at present that the reasons for 



274 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

placing Isaiah and Zechariah as is done in Orelli's 
scheme do not appear to us to be sufficient. 

In any event, however, it is worth while to observe 
here the general fact ? that the darkest period of the 
Israelitish political history was the most brilliant period 
of Israelitish prophecy. Especially is this true of the 
times subsequent to the judges. The national sins, 
and confusions, and defeats, and exiles became the best 
occasion of its rise and development. The more im- 
minent the danger that the ship of church and state 
would sink, the more vigorous the cry of warning and 
the effort put forth by the faithful prophet to save it. 
And had there been no night, there had been no song 
of the dawn. Had there been no clouds, there had 
been no rainbow. Prophecy brought to the people in 
their darkest hour a larger hope of the resurrection 
both in the national and in the individual or personal 
sense of the term; and the root of the hope lay in the 
gloom of the present, as it is only night that can make 
us think of morning and a brighter day. Prophecy 
also brought during these periods of national degener- 
acy and calamity a larger anticipation of judgment 
after death. While it did not displace Mosaism, and 
did not seek to do so, it became its consumation and 
fulfillment. It cared not much for sacrifices and offer- 
ings (Isa. 1, 11-15; Jer. vii, 4), but by placing its 
greater emphasis on repentance and the spiritual nature 
of God's requirements (Isa. i, 16-18; Jer. vii, 5-7, 
etc.), prepared the way for the abolition of ritual and 
symbol. But while the prophets, even in periods of 
greatest gloom, never lose sight of the national iden- 
tity, but are ever jealous of it, they do ere long mount 
the partition wall between Israel and the Gentiles, and 



PERIOD OF THE' PBOPBBT& 

proclaim a kingdom of God which haying it- center at 
Jerusalem shall embrace all nation.-, and perm 
them with it- benign influence I-a. ii. 2 -4; Ificah, 1". 
1-6, etc.). This, however, leads ns into Messianic 
prophecy, tin- chief glory of Israel's most brilliant 
prophetic air*', and the failure on the part of the later 
Jew- to rightly apprehend which bo largely inflnen 
their treatment of Jesus, and consequently the whole 
content- of the New Testament. 



Chapter II. 



NATURE AM) CHARACTERISTICS OP PROPHE4 V. 

1. The J ft. 

The prophetic gift is to be distinguished from the 
prophetic office. Many were prophet- who were not 
inspired, and some were inspired who wen- not proph- 
- to office. Am >- wasnol a profe— ional prophet, 
and had not been educated in the pi na] school 

(Amos vii, lit. The sixteen prophets whose books 
are in the canon have that place of honor, not because 
they belonged to the prophetic order, but because they 
were endowed with the prophetic irift. "There were 
hundreds of prophets contemporary with each of tJ 
sixteen prophets; and no doubt numberless com] 
tion- in I poetry and numberless moral exhorta- 

tion- were issued from the several schools, but only 
sixteen books find their place in the canon. Why is 
tlii- r What circumstance was it, which in his own 



276 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

consciousness, gave authority to his word, and en- 
rolled him among the prophets even though his name 
were not on the register of the collegians ? 

The fact that gave or helped to give him authority 
among the people was, no doubt, the fact that he be- 
longed, even though in some instances informally, to 
a recognized and influential institution which had come 
into prominence in the days of the mighty revival 
under Samuel. At the time of Elijah, or Isaiah, or 
the later prophets, it had long been " gray with years; " 
and therefore the institution itself ' ' to many was god- 
like," aside from any personal weight of character 
which any individual member of it might have. 
The prophet, as we have seen, was the educated and 
wise man of the day; the counsellor, not only of the 
people, but of the kings also. He wore the profes- 
sional costume; and whether intrinsically a true 
prophet or a false one, exacted and received the re- 
spect due to his office. It was not a strange thing, 
therefore, that both kings and people should have been 
misled by false prophets; and, however considerable 
the former may have been, the latter were always more 
so. " Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scat- 
ter the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord * * * 
Behold I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, 
saith the Lord, and [but] I will gather the remnant of 
my flock out of the countries whither I have driven 
them, and will bring them again to their folds," (Jer. 
xxiii, 1 f.). 

But while the people may not always have been able 
to distinguish between the true prophets and the false, 
the true prophet had more than the outward sign. 
He carried with him a prophetic consciousness of his 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 277 



inward gifl which rendered him twice armed and 
doubly strong. Nor was this conviction merely of or- 
dinary or natural origin, such as might have been 
shared by the false prophet. It was from above. It 
was peculiar to the true prophet. lb 1 did not know 
himself to be a prophet, merely because of a conscious 
possession of any natural gifts, — for even the false 
prophet may have recognized in- himself the presence 
of natural gifts, whereas the true prophet was by no 
means ready to do SO (Ex. x, 10; Jer. i, 6); not be- 
cause of any predilection which he may have had for 
the office, for not all prophets had such predilection, 
" Ah, Lord God ! behold I cannot speak; for I am a 
child," was doubtless the cry of others than Jeremiah. 
The true prophet knew himself to be such by virtue of 
a divine call, an irrepressible appeal to his conscience, 
as the true minister of the gospel knows himself to be 
such by his conscious endowment with the enlighten- 
ing, sanctifying, and strengthening spirit of God. 
Thus the true prophet knew that he was a prophet 
even in the moments when he was not inspired; and 
thus he knew, at the times of his inspiration, that the 
message he delivered was the message of God. He 
could not withhold it, even if he would (Jer. xx, 9). 
11 The Lord hath given me the tongue of them that are 
taught,' said Isaiah, " that I should know how to sus- 
tain with words him that is weary; he waketh morning 
by morning, he waketh mine ear to hear as them that 
are taught," (1, 4). u The Lord God hath spoken; who 
can but prophecy ?" (Amos iii, 8). And so far as each 
special prophetical utterance -was concerned, it was not 
sufficient that the prophets' call should have been made 
once for all; each utterance was the result of a special 



278 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

' ' communication of the Divine to the human spirit, " 
whether received by vision or " the word of the Lord" 
(Isa. vi. 1; Jer. ii, 1). 

But the false prophets most of whom doubtless had 
been members of the schools, and wore the official 
costume, spoke lying divination after the manner of 
the heathen, out of their own hearts (2 Kings xvii, 17; 
Jer. xiv, 14; Ezek xiii, 7). They followed their own 
spirit, and were like foxes in the waste places. They 
went not up into the gaps, neither made up the fence 
for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day 
of the Lord (Ezek. xiiii 5). 

§ 2. Hebrew Prophecy and Heathen Mantism. 

The Septuagint translators rightly rendered the 
Hebrew word nabi by the Greek word prophet, instead 
of the word mantis / mantism in the west and shaman- 
ism in the east being the general terms designating the 
means whereby the heathen world sought to gratify 
its thirst for divine revelation. The object of both was, 
in general, to inform man how to do what was right 
and pleasing to the Being whom it regarded as su- 
preme; but even a slight comparison of the two with 
each other enables us to see how far mantism fell be- 
low prophecy, with which some have so incorrectly al- 
lied it. Hebrew prophecy is something unique. It is 
characteristic only of the religion of Israel, nothing 
closely resembling it being found anywhere in heathen- 
ism, not even in Mohameclanism or the religion of any 
other Shemitic peoples. Mantism flourished most in 
the darkest periods of heathenism. It could not stand 
the test of advancing culture and criticism; the more 
philosophy increased, the more mantism declined. Not 



PERIOD OF THE PHOPHE/s 



so with prophecy; its most brilliant period being the 
most brilliant of the Hebrew culture and criticism. 
Mantism and Shamanism could sustain themselves 

even at their best only by resorting to the flight of 
birds, the entrails of animals, the motion of the stars, 
the sighing of the wind, enigmatic characters, unnatural 
frenzies, observations of tortoise shells, ventriloquism, 
clairvoyance, and the various machinery of divination. 
Prophecy, in its best age especially, had no appliances. 
It stood alone, sustained only by the power of the 
Spirit, and God spoke unto man, as one spirit to 
another, in clear speech. Indeed, the religion of Israel, 
as is well known, was peculiarly hostile to all forms of 
sorcery and soothsaying, upon which the prophets, 
even from Moses onward, failed not to pronounce over 
and over again severe denunciations (Ex. xxii, 18; 
Deut. xviii, 10; Micah v, 12, etc.). Tiny were sins 
which could be classed only with the worst. The nox- 
ious weed must be exterminated, for if allowed to 
flourish, true prophecy, which was essential to a true 
divine revelation, would only be smothered. The in- 
stances mentioned in 1 Sam. x, 9-12 and xix, 24, of 
prophetic frenzy or stupor are not instances of true 
Biblical prophecy, and belong to the earlier and ruder 
stage of the prophetic order. And only to a Saul, and 
for a special reason, would Divine interpretation vouch- 
safe a true answer through the medium of a witch (1 
Sam. xxviii, 7-20). The fact that Saul came at night, 
and that the woman put her life in her hand (ver. 21 >, 
shows that even in that dark day witchcraft was not 
safe in Israel. The Urim and Thummim was es 
sentially different from any form of sacred lot known 
in heathenism. Here the answer was always an ex- 



280 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

plicit direction in reference to a particular case, no fur- 
ther explanation being needed, and no nrystic appli- 
ances or formulae in connection with it being resorted 
to. But even the Urim and Thummim belonged only 
to the lower periods of Israel's growth, passing away 
as the nation advanced to higher stages of moral and 
religious elevation. He who in the earlier days was 
called a ' ' seer " was in the later days called a 
" prophet " (1 Sam. ix, 9); and " to be the mouth- 
piece, the spoksman, of Jehovah, was higher than to 
see visions of the future, however clear, whether of 
the armies of Israel, or the lost asses of Kish. The 
Urim and Thummim disappeared with Abiathar of the 
time of David (1 Sam. xxiii, 5-9). 

Heathen mantism was a failure. It appealed largely 
to idle or selfish curiosity, and left the people no bet- 
ter than it found them. Hebrew prophecy was not a 
failure, and in its teachings left the world an everlast- 
ing treasure. Instead of appealing to idle or selfish 
curiosity, Hebrew prophecy was not infrequently in 
direct and dangerous antagonism with it. The prophet 
lost his head; the mantis knew how to drive a good 
bargain, and did it. The prophet spoke what he must 
and because he must. If his words bubbled up, it was 
not in frenzy or with foaming mouth, but only in the 
sense that the words of honest, and earnest, and en- 
tirely responsible and conscious thinkers and speakers, 
have done the same thing. 

My heart was hot within me; 

While I was musing the fire kindled; 

Then spoke I with my tongue. — (Psa. xxxix, 3). 

And Jeremiah: " If I say, I will not make men- 
tion of him, nor speak any more in his name, then is 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 881 

in [nine heart .-is ii were a burning fire shut up in my 
bones, and I am weary with forbearing (xx, 9). It 
was this thai made the prophet's words •• boil forth," 
and he received neither salary nor perquisites (Micah 
iii, 5-11; Ezek xxx, 10, 2, etc). 

Hebrew prophecy was in its passive form the recep- 
tion of a revelation; in its active form it was interpre- 
tation, or the communication of the revelation to those 
for whom it was intended. And though God did at 
times employ the dream and the vision in transmitting 
his message to the prophet, it was neither the usual 
nor the higher mode, and it was not the dream and 
vision of the mantis. The visions of Isaiah, and 
Ezekiel, and Daniel, have no correspondence in heathen 
theology. Usually the prophet was in his ordinary 
waking physical condition, and in this condition was, 
by a direct Divine impulse to his thoughts, caused to 
think something which ordinarily he would not, or 
could not, have thought. This was his inspiration, or 
prophetic state. His mind was passive only in so far 
a- he simply received the message instead of creating 
il; and when the message was given forth by him it 
bore with it the marks of his individuality. 

The habitual state of the prophet was doubtless one 
of intense mental alertness (Hah. ii, 1, Ezek. xxxiii, 7, 
etc.); and this alertness was, indeed, an essential part 
of his receptive attitude, and constituted another es- 
sentia] difference between the prophet and the mantis. 
It was this condition of habitual mental alertness that 
rendered the man capable of becoming an inspired 
prophet; or, in other words, which became in him the 
basis on which the Holy Spirit could operate. Of 
course God could transform lifeless stones into proph- 



282 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ets, and only in this sense was it possible for him to 
constitute any man at random an inspired prophet; for 
not every man had the natural endowment or acquire- 
ments which were necessary at the outset as a sub- 
structure for the supernatural. What Isaiah was when 
" moved by the Holy Ghost," depended to some ex- 
tent upon what Isaiah was when he was not so moved. 
Two men may have the same teacher and yet become 
very unequal scholars. Two may see the same objects, 
or read the same history, and yet draw from them 
very different lessons. The holy men of old spake as 
they were moved by the Divine Spirit, but they were 
moved in accordance with what they were before they 
were moved. 

But they did not reach the subject matter of the 
heavenly message by any new process of reasoning; 
but from the message communicated to him the 
prophet might, by a process of reasoning, endeavor to 
deduce others; or, the reflective faculty being awak- 
ened, he might endeavor to understand the further 
import of what he had uttered. They did not, how- 
ever, in every case at least, succeed. 4 'And I heard, 
but I understood not," said Daniel; "Then said I, O, 
my Lord, what shall be the issue of these things ? And 
he said, Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are shut 
up and sealed till the time of the end." (ch. xii, 8.) 
And Peter affirms of the prophets generally that they 
sought and searched diligently, "as miners search in 
the earth after precious metals, concerning what time 
and what historical circumstances the spirit of the pre- 
existing Messiah had reference to when he testified to 
them of the salvation which should come" (I Pet. 1 , 10). 
The question, therefore, What did the prophet under- 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 



stand by his message \ is b\ qo means identical with, 

What was the larger import in the mind of the spirit \ 
And this last question it was not possible, in many 
cases, for cither prophet or people to fully understand. 
In this respect also prophecy differed from mantism, 
for its duplicity was essentially different from the du 
plicity of the heathen oracle. 

§3. Propht c>j "/></ 'tlw Natural Shemitic Gi niits. 

As Hebrew prophecy is a wholly different thing from 
heathen mantisni, so neither can it be regarded as the 
peculiar offspring of the peculiar Hebrew genius. There 
was nothing so peculiar in the Hebrew genius that 
it should have produced anything so peculiar as He- 
brew prophecy. "No doubt/* says Orelli, "a com- 
mon spiritual inheritance Is traceable among the 
Kdomites, Arabians, Moabites, etc.; but whilst these 
tribes more and more blended the knowledge of God 
transmitted to them with heathenism, .... in 
Israel alone a converse with God was maintained, 
worthy of the majesty and condescension of the Su- 
preme Spirit, and conducive to his further revelation. 
Of prophecy, there is Little sign in these tribes. The 
'wise men' are there the depositories of the knowledge 
of God, inherited from antiquity, [and which became 
more and more a lost inheritance, until light was bor- 
rowed in after days from Israel]. Of a future plan of 
God they have nothing to tell." The inspiration of 
Mohammed is merely religious enthusiasm, and his 

Language c *is related to that of the prophets pretty 

much as the confused tirades of a spiritualistic medium. 
made up of motley reminiscences, and held together 

by mere patiio>, are related to the works of the spirits 



£84 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



whom he professes to represent. Mohammed is, 
throughout, an epigous of biblical literature, and what 
he has of national character in common with the proph- 
ets of the old covenant is too little to raise him to the 
height from which they bear their testimony through 
the Sovereign Spirit of God." 

On the contrary, the natural tendency of the Hebrew 
was toward the religious level of the surrounding na- 
tions; and with this national religious tendency, proph- 
ecy was in perpetual antagonism. If prophecy be the 
product of natural evolution, it furnishes a remarkable 
instance of a people possessed of a persistent tendency 
to move in two opposite directions at the same time, 
the weakest tendency finally surviving. The differ- 
ences in Hebrew prophecy, as compared with all forms 
of mantism and shamanism— the differences of content 
as compared with the religious literature of all ages 
and nations, its sublime heights of conception, its pro- 
found insight into the human heart and into the course 
of history, its wonderful unity, being the product of 
so many different ages and circumstances, its lofty 
moral elevation above the national trend, and, above 
all, its conformity to truth and fact, cannot be ac 
counted for on any other hypothesis than that it is of 
God. 

And yet there is a human element even in biblical 
prophecy. If not, then any Hamitic or Japhetic tribe 
that may be named might as well have been selected 
to be the covenant people of Jehovah as the Hebrews. 
But there must have been a national basis for the 
Divme choice. And comparative psychology finds 
such basis in the line of Shem. The religious faculty 
was their distinguishing faculty, as compared with 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS 



Hamites and Aryans. They were more adapted by 
nature than their equals or superiors in culture "to see 
the absolute in the finite, the workings of God in na- 
ture, his action in history, and to hear his words in 
the inner spiritual life of individuals. 91 (Orelli.) 

But there is not only an ethnological, but also an in- 
dividual human element in prophecy. It was in Abra 
ham, and so Abraham was chosen. It was in each of 
the prophets, and appears in their prophecies. The 
prophecies were the light transmitted through the 
prophets, and the light comes to us tinged with the 
individuality of the medium, but none the less divine. 
Amos was none the less Amos after he became a 
prophet; and precisely BUCh a man as he was needed to 
transmit a certain light to Israel. If Divine lamenta- 
tions over the desolation of Zion are to be communi- 
cated, there must be a Jeremiah for the purpose. God 
speaks to those who have ears to hear — ears for the 
particular message. The kingdom is of many phases, 
and many parables are needed to complete the list of 
likenesses. 

^4. Th> Predictive Element in Prophecy. 

A prophet, or imh'^ was not one merely who foretold 
future events. Indeed, he may not have foretold at 
all, and yet have been a prophet. This was a mere ac- 
cident of hi- office, though a- a matter of fact it does 
abound in the recorded utterances of the Old Testa- 
ment prophets. But a prophet was one who spoke for 
another a prescribed message, as his authorized agent 
or representative. The word, or message, may ormay 
not have been a prediction. It was -imply a revealed 
fact or truth, whether of permanent and general na- 



286 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES 



ture, or one pertaining to the past, present or 
future. It may have been a fact or truth 
which the prophet knew simply by the exercise of 
his own natural faculties. It is true that the mass 
of the people was always more impressed, for the 
time being at least, by the miracles or predictions of 
the prophets than by their moral and spiritual ideas; 
and it is easy to be explained why, after the perma- 
nent withdrawal of the prophetic gift, still greater 
weight has been laid, by both Jews and Christians, 
upon the predictive elements of the prophecies which 
have been preserved. But it remains true that pre- 
diction was only one of the means whereby prophecy 
would accomplish its end. 

Prophecy admitted that a knowledge of the future 
was desirable; but one of its chief functions was to 
enable the Israelitish nation to know the future only 
as a means to an end, and to know it in a certain 
way, which way alone would be pleasing to God and 
a blessing to man. It restricted its revelations of 
the future to matters of national interest and theo- 
cratic import. It was as different from fortune-telling 
as miracle was from mere wonder-working. Predic- 
tions held the same relative place in God's dealings 
with his Old Testament people that miracle held in 
^he hand of Christ. He wrought no miracle merely 
for the sake of healing. The prophft foretold no 
event for the sake merely of furnishing the Israel- 
itish public with the advance sheets of news. The 
miracles were obviously only incidents — suitable means 
to a far higher end. Prophecy employed predictions 
only where it was needful to do so, ful tilling its 
function only in part by the miracle of foreknowl- 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 

edge, and in pari by pointing the eves of the nation 
backward to the holy and righteous government of 
God as manifested in their own history, and to the 
aims of Divine providence as exhibited in thai 
history. 

The object thus sought was to qualify the people 
to anticipate and thereby avoid possible judgment, 
to walk conscious of and ever mindful of their own 
mission as the chosen people,, and of the great future 
which this involved, even regarding it as beneath 
their dignity to be dependent upon any form of sooth- 
saying. They already knew their future; they did 
not, like the heathen, need to be informed by any 
undignified and precarious means; and the predictions 
of the prophets were to be regarded rather as of the 
nature of reminders. ''Therefore thou hast forsaken 
thy people, the house of Jacob, because . . . they 
are soothsayers like the Philistines." (Isa. ii, 6). The 
resort for knowledge of the future must be cither to 
soothsaying or to Jehovah, as teaching them in their 
own and in predictive prophecy. They could not re- 
sort to both. Therefore 'T will cut off witchcraft out 
of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsay- 
ing." (Mi. v. L2). Or, in other word-, the office of 
prophecy was to promote and unfold the ways of the 

kingdom of Grod, and to this end it looked both hack- 
ward and forward. 

There i- a form of rationalism which holds that the 
predictions of particular events, which also in many 
instances tell within the sphere of prophecy, is inad- 
missible on the ground of its destroying human free 
dom and thereby interfering with history. It affirms 
that if God knows an event a- contingent, it cannot be 



288 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

predicted as certain, and yet it is so predicted; there- 
fore the prediction is not reliable. Or, history implies 
freedom, they say; but if the prophet predicts that Is- 
rael will, then Israel must; and hence there is no 
longer freedom, and hence no longer history, 
but only fatalism. But rather than reject the 
possibility of history, the rationalists of this 
school prefer to reject the possibility, or rather the re- 
liability, of the predictive element in prophecy. But 
this view must be summarily rejected. For, in the 
first place, as Edersheim rightly says, predictive 
prophecy is " never absolute, but always subject to 
moral conditions." Predicted events are predicted a& 
contingent, either impliedly or expressly (Isa. vi, 9 if); 
they are not predicted as absolutely certain, but only 
as contingently so. And in the second place, the 
course of the world is not entirely, perhaps not even 
mainly, dependent on the arbitrary decision of the hu- 
man will. God does not change his will; but he wills 
changes. He rules. And yet man is free. But the 
freedom of history is the freedom of God. 

§ 5. Characteristics of Prophecy. 

In addition to the characteristics of prophecy already 
discussed in the foresroin^ sections the following dis- 
tinctive features of the prophetic literature in general 
may be here mentioned : 

1. Its immediate practical character. While the 
contemporaries of the prophets did not see all the ends 
aimed at, nor know all the far-reaching significance of 
the prophetic utterances, they might nevertheless know 
very well all that was intended for them, and all that 
was essential to their welfare. VYhere the prophet 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS 

said, •• T irn j turn ye, < > bouse of [srael," as he did 
Bay over and over again, in one way and another, the 
people could not be mistaken as to what that meant. 
And when he said l< Retribution," which also, in one 
phraseology or another, was one of the ** burdens " of 
prophecy, thej knew very well what that meant. 
They may not have understood all that it meant for 
some future generation, but they understood enough 
of what it meant for them. So, also, when the 
prophet uttered a message of promise, as he often did, 
it might be couched in enigmas, or symbols; but 
whether so or not, the people could always know that 
it meant something good, though theymight not know 
all tin* details. They could distinguish the rainbow 
from tl]< % cloud, the promise from the threatened retri- 
bution, and know the relation in which they themselves 
stood to both. They needed not to know the particu- 
lar-. The people, like the prophets themselves, needed 
rather always to be kept on the alert; and tin* only 
way to keep them on the alert was for them alwaj - to 
have in mind the wondering questions, What sort of 
L r <»"'l thing is it that is promised J What sort of evil 
thing is it that is threatened? By hope and appre- 
hension should they be saved, both as a nation and as 
individuals, just as we an 

■_ ; . It- intensely moral character. It is Dot merely 
u predicted history." It is not merely ** tidings about 
the future." It is not misty speculations, and vagaries, 
and triflings, such a great extent characterized 

the religious literature of the heathen, or even the 
writings of the later Jews. "It had a present mean- 
ing and a present lesson to those who heard it," and 
to those who should come after them. \ prophet 



290 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

could not have been a prophet had he not also been a 
preacher; and he looked both backward and forward 
in order that he might influence his own times, no less 
than future generations. The saying of the apostle, 
that ' ' all scripture * * * is profitable for teach- 
ing, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which 
is in righteousness" (II Tim. iii, 16), is applicable alike to 
the utterance of the prophets as addressed to their own 
times and as intended for the future. Its aim was 
largely ethical; it sought to enlist everything on the 
side of practical holiness. Its prediction, its retro- 
spection, its warnings, its rebukes, its promises, all 
look to this end. It nowhere stops with the imparta- 
tion of mere knowledge. 

3. Its evangelical character. It went beyond the 
sphere of ethics. It is pervaded with truth adapted to 
human nature as fallen and guilty. It looks beyond 
morals to religion; beyond the sacerdotal to the spirit- 
ual; it spoke with such vehemence against the current 
ceremonialism, as to appear even to regard it as sin- 
ful (Amos v. 22 ff. ; Hos. vi, 6; Micah vi, 6 ff., etc.) 
Though all the prophetical books do not possess this 
characteristic in an equal degree, it is nevertheless found 
in all. The Messianic idea in its broader or narrower 
sense, is everywhere present. It is this that gives 
them coherency; in this is found their " higher unity . " 

4. The time element. The future in prophecy 
often appears as immediately present, — predicted 
events or conditions being spoken of as now transpir- 
ing, or as already past. Balaam, who for the time be- 
ing was a prophet of Jehovah, furnishes an illustration 
(Num. xxiv, 15-19); what he saw, his natural eye be- 
ing closed, he saw as at that moment taking place. He 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 291 

saw a star rising out of Jacob; a sceptre rising out of 
Israel, and smiting through the corners of Moab, and 
breaking down all the sons of tumult. Another in- 
stance is Isa. liii, where the events described are rep- 
resented as being already completed. (See, also, Fsa. 
v. L3; viii, 23; Jer. ii, 26; Ezek. iii, 25, etc). To 
Buch an extent does this usage occur that grammarians 
have called it the "prophetic" perfect, when that form 
of the veil) is the one employed. 

Here also is to be noted the subordinate importance 
which prophecy attaches to dates. In a few instances 
only is emphasis placed upon the exact time of fulfill- 
ment, as in Ezek. xii, 28; Dan. ix.; Isa. xvi, 14; xxi, 
16. The chronological datum usually is simply "in 
that day," or "in the last days." Everyone knows 
with what frequency these indefinite expressions oc- 
cur. In the short prophecy of Zechariah alone the 
latter phrase is found no less than fourteen times; one 
side of the picture of "that day," or the last age, be- 
ing a description as vivid, as intense and awful as the 
famous Dies lr<B, while the other is the wilderness and 
solitary place already made glad, and the desert blos- 
soming with roses. The prophet's horizon is the end 
of the age, or kayyom hahu, "which represents the 
termination of the course of spiritual development in 
the midst of which the prophet stands." (Orelli). But 
between him and the farthest and highest peak on his 
horizon are lower peaks, and the prophet sees not the 
intervening valleys. 

5. Grouping events. In lieu of definite chronolog- 
ical Btatemenl as to the exact time when an event shall 
take place, prophecy groups the events which it pre- 
dicts according to their necessary chronological order. 



292 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

A certain event shall transpire, and this shall be suc- 
ceeded by another, and this again by another, the ex- 
act time when in no case being given. In its predict- 
ive element prophecy generally looks far ahead to the 
consummation of the kingdom of God, when his will shall 
be the accepted rule of all men. In other words, its ultL 
mate object of vision is the fulfillment of God's pur- 
pose of salvation in the last days, its immediate object 
being salvation as a process, or " the way in which 
God conducts his purpose of salvation from the actual 
present to its fulfillment or appointed end." (Kurtz). 
Hence it looks to the past and to the present in order 
that it may look to the future, having need in its refer- 
ences to the latter, not of exact dates, but only of the 
order of succession. In prophetic vision we have 
first, guilt, then retribution, and lastly redemption, 
the dark cloud always being encircled with a rainbow. 
But the exact times of the retribution and redemption 
are not given. The judgment is first upon Israel, then 
upon the world. The deliverance is first from Assyria, 
or Babylon, or other world-power happening to be 
dominant at the time of the prophet's speaking, 
but which ere long becomes suggestive of deliverance 
under the Messianic reign; the near future being com- 
bined, or blended, in prophetic thought, with the far 
future; as the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of 
the Jewish economy are combined in prophetic vision 
with the end of the world. This is what is sometimes 
called the perspective character of prophecy. The seer 
looked from hill-top to farther hill-top, nor did he in 
every case determine whether the object, or group of 
objects, was on a nearer hill-top or beyond; the far 
away ones would seem to be projected on the same 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 398 



horizon -thai unknown depth of prophetic background 
called "the last days." The prophet knew that he 
saw the object, but he knew not exactly when. This 
characteristic belongs to New Testament prophecy no 
less than to Old. Paul knew that the Lord would 
come, and he knew that there would he a great apos- 
tasy, but he knew not how far oft' was either event. 
The fact was more important than the time when. But 
when prophecy becomes history, the far and the nearer 
may be distinguished. 

6. Its dependence upon history. By history is here 
meant the outward experiences of Israel in the past 
and in the prophets' present. The same God who re- 
vealed to Israel lessons by prophecy also conducted the 
course of Israel's history; and he did the former in 
large part by means of the latter. If David had had 
no bitter experiences he could not have been, according 
to the Divine way of working, the inspired author of 
the Messianic twenty-second psalm. As prophecy was 
from the beginning "a preparation for Christ,'' so was 
history a preparation for prophecy. The later bril- 
liant predictions concerning the Messianic King and 
his Kingdom would not have been possible in the days 
when "there was no king in Israel." The prophecies 
of Isaiah concerning the suffering Servant of Jehovah 
would have been an impossible anachronism in the days 
of Solomon. 

Prophecy accommodated itself to the plane of the 
people who were primarily addressed. Its subject mat- 
ter is couched in current terms. It receives coloring 
from the nation's past and from the circumstances <>t' 
the prophets 1 present. Polities, geography and eth- 
nology enlarged its sphere by bringing new and sug- 



294 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



gestive experiences into Israel's history, and new na- 
tions within the range of the prophet's vision. The 
future kingdom of God (e. g.) is presented as an ex- 
tended and glorified form of the theocracy, with which 
the prophet and people are familiar; and this seems to 
be at least one providential use which God made of the 
persistent desire of the people in Samuel's time to have 
a king and a kingdom (I Sam. viii, 1-22). The king- 
dom granted them became ever afterward a kind of 
object-lesson, or illustration. The king of the future 
kingdom of God was to be another David, who was 
the greatest of the kings of Israel (Isa. xxx, 9 Ezek. 
xxxvii, 21, 25;Hos. iii, 5, etc.) It was too soon yet 
to say, "The kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 
xvii, 21). The well-known temple is the material of 
the vision of Ezekiel (ch. xli, xlii). The admission of 
other nations into the kingdom of God is represented 
as the nations traveling in an unbroken stream to 
Mount Zion (Isa. ii, 2; Micah iv, 1, 2). The world 
hostile to the kingdom of God is represented as the 
enemies of Israel — Moab, Edom, Assyria, or which_ 
ever one happened to be the dominant one at the proph. 
et's time, or was regarded as the permanent and rep- 
resentative enemy. But did the prophet understand it 
all thus ? Not perfectly. We read in the light of f ul. 
fillment and subsequent revelations. Facts were re- 
vealed to the prophets, but not always interpretations. 
The diction they employed in such cases, as above men- 
tioned, was not conscious figure of speech. If Assyria 
was spoken of, Assyria was meant. The form of the 
mold into which the truth is cast, in order that the 
abstract may become concrete, and the spiritual become 
visible, is determined by the familiar historical sur- 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 295 



roundings. While, therefore, the literal Israel or As 
syria was meant, it was the mold into which another 
Israel or Assyria was east, the nature of which even 
the prophet, to say nothing of the average Israelite. 
may not have clearly perceived. Nor is it strange that 
it should have been so. To speak to any age in the 
language of the future is to speak to it in an unknown 
tongue — and the prophets did not so entirely speak. 
The future to every age is to some extent the projec- 
tion of the present. We describe heaven in the terms 
of earth. It is the place of "rest" because we are 
"weary" here. When the child sings of u the happy 
land, far, far away," the child understands it, doubtless, 
in a literal sense; and the most that wiser ones can 
make of it is that it means something good. 

And yet prophecy was not merety the interpreter 'of 
history; not the natural offspring of its past aud pres- 
ent. History w as only the wind that blew upon it, 
making its voice loud and soft, making it breathe 
threatenings of storm or promise of sunshine and blos- 
soms. Prophecy was the work of God — and this the 
prophet knew. 

7. The realization. The prophet sees the realiza- 
tion of the matter of prophecy in particular events 
which are complete in themselves; e. g. : In Joel iii, 
the outpouring of the Spirit on the people of God is 
presented in the prophetic intuition as a single act, 
which the prophet may have thought exhausted the 
prophecy; so also the judgment of the end of 
the world is presented as a single act of judg- 
ment, taking place in the valley of Jehosa- 
phat. Whereas, the fulfillment is really a process of 
long and gradual development; the one outpouring, or 



296 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the one judgment, being only a link of the long un- 
broken chain, or grand culmination of a series of simi- 
lar events. This has been called the law of dilation, 
though speaking of it with reference to the prophets' 
own point of view, it would be better called the law of 
visual compression. Many objects seen from far away 
appear to be compressed into one, but as we draw 
near to them, they appear as they really are, more than 
one. 

8. Apparent contradiction. Another peculiarity of 
prophecy is the frequent apparent contradiction of the 
matter of one prophecy by that of another; e. g. : One 
prophet looks to the future and reports the Messiah as 
the Prince of Peace. Another reports him as a war- 
like hero. At one time he is a civil ruler, at another 
the Servant of Jehovah, atoning for the sins of the 
people. The fact is that prophecy recognizes, whether 
the prophet in every instance recognizes it or not, that 
before there can be peace there must be war; before 
the plowshare and the pruning-hook must be the sword 
and the spear. Before reconciliation there must be 
expiation. Prophecy looks at one time on this side, at 
another on that. It presents in these cases of apparent 
contradiction the particular as particular and not in its 
connections. But all the lines of vision converge to 
one and the same object, which, in the illustrative case 
taken, is the one Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish in- 
terpreter, from the beginning, has stumbled here, be- 
cause he did not detect the point of convergence. 

§ 6. Forms of Prophecy. 

It already follows from what has been said that we 
are to seek the fulfillment of predictive prophecy under 



PERIOD OF TEE PROPHETS. 297 

the limitations of the form in which it may be presented. 
That which the prophet said literally is not in 
every instance that which the prophet meant; and 
hence it often becomes necessary to distinguish care- 
fully the substance from the type, or form, employed 
to convey it to us. Failure to do this identifies 
prophecy with history, destroys, in many instances, 
the possibility of fulfillment and reduces prophecy, in 
its predictive aspect especially, to a mere u compound 
of truth and error, of blasted hopes and disappointed 
expectations." The following, beginning with the 
lowest, are the gradations of the forms of predictive 
prophecy, recognized by all writers between the ex- 
tremes of Montanism on the one hand, and Rationalism 
on the other * 

1. The rudest material symbols. As examples see 
the rent garment of Ahijah the Shelonite (I Kings xi, 
30, 31); the two staves of Zechariah (Zeck. xi, 7). 
Instances are numerous, the symbolism, of course, be- 
ing too evident to be mistaken by anyone. 

2. Types. " By type," says Orelli, " we under- 
stand the inadequate presentation of a divine idea 
which is to be more perfectly realized afterwards. The 
spirit of God not only reveals himself in definite words 
which he sup-crests to consecrated seers. He also rules 
in history, shaping it with significant reference to the 
future." Types are either — 

*The rationalistic theory of prophecy, viz., that it was, at the 
most, only the wise guessing of astute discerners of the signs of 
the times, can hold its own only against the Montanistic theory, 
which, failing to distinguish between form and substance, 
sought literal and detailed fulfillment. See Brigg's Messianic 
Prophecy, pgs. 43 seq. 



298 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

(1) Archodogical, as the ritualistic system of 
Moses; or, 

(2) Historical, as the exodus of Israel from Egypt 
and the destruction of their enemies; or, 

(3) Personal types, as Moses, David, Solomon, each 
of whom illustrated in his office or life one or more as- 
pects of the personal Messiah. 

The essential difference between the type and verbal 
prophecy consists in the fact that in the latter there 
was a recognized reference to the future, while in the 
former there was not. The contemporaries of Moses 
did not see Christ in Moses nor in the ritual; if they 
had, they would not have needed the ritual. Types 
were makeshifts, temporary expedients, substitutes for 
the thing itself. In no case is there an exact correspond- 
ence between the type and the future reality. The 
point to be guarded against with this form of prophecy 
is to avoid mistaking a mere fane ful for a divinely 
desig?ied resemblance. Only by knowing the antetype 
as it appears in the fulfillment, can we know the type. 
The New Testament lies hid in the Old, but not in the 
wholesale and yet one-sided sense which many of the 
early fathers supposed. 

3. Tyjpico. prophetic-form. Psa. lxxx, 8-15, is a 
striking instance, as also Micah iv, Isa. ii, Dan. ii and 
Ezek. xl ff. Under this head fall also prophetic parables 
and tales, as Psa. xlv, and the song of Solomon, and 
extravagant descriptions apparently of one's experience 
(Psa. xxii). The attempt, on the one hand, to inter- 
pret this class of prophecies rigidly, and find their ex- 
act fulfillment in history must fail, and bring predictive 
prophecy into disrepute; while on the other hand to ig- 
nore the type element in them is to deny the possibility 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 

of prediction, for manifestly some of these prophecies 
were never fulfilled in any such sense. Examples: 
Jer. xxxiii, 7; Ezek. xi, 15-18; Zech. x, G; Isa. xi, 
13, etc. 



Chapter III. 



DOCTRINAL CONTENTS OF DAVIDIC PROPHECY. 



A. THE PREDICTIVE, OR OBJECTIVE, ELEMENT. 

The Central Thought. 

The central and controlling thought of the Davidic 
predictive prophecy is of the Messiah and his kingdom. 
Israel, now as formerly, looked forward, not backward, 
to its golden days; and now, as before and after, pre- 
diction took its verbal form and expression from the 
current inward and outward circumstances of the peo- 
ple. And yet as we have seen, it was ever an esscn- 
tiaJ characteristic of prophecy to be larger than the 
immediate fulfillment — larger, perhaps, than the im- 
mediate hope of either prophet or people. 

The first faint gleams of the dawn of Davidic proph- 
ecy appear in I Sam. ii, 1-10 and 35, 36. In the first, 
Hannah, whom God had caused to be the mother of 
Samuel, and in view of her recent devotion of the child 
to God, rises in prophetic praise to the conception of 
Jehovah as the universal and all-wise One who judgeth 
the ends of the earth, in order to give strength to his 



300 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

king, in order to exalt the horns of his anointed. As 
yet there was no king in Israel; and yet it is Israel's 
king whom Jehovah will strengthen and exalt through 
judgment upon all his enemies. The human basis of 
the prophecy is the longing of the nation for a king, 
which on account of the unsettled condition of the peo- 
ple, was already beginning to manifest itself ; and 
hence the distinct reference to a king of Israel here 
can be regarded as neither unnatural nor unhistorical. 
The prophecy found its first great fulfillment in David 
and his prosperous kingdom, and yet still more con- 
spicuously in David's greater Son, of the enduring 
order and unfading prosperity of whose reign that of 
the former was but the temporal shadow. In verses 
35, 36 it i§ predicted that in the place of the unfaithful 
and degenerate house of Eli a faithful priesthood 
should be raised up which should minister before this 
anointed king forever. In this instance, also, it is the 
evil of the present that inclines and enables the proph- 
etic eye to look only the more keenly to the future. 
And yet the darkness continued for long years after 
Samuel's birth, the times growing worse rather than 
better. But it was known from Dan even unto Beer- 
sheba that Samuel was established to be a prophet of 
Jehovah (I Sam. iii, 20). So there was hope. 

These two prophecies became well known in Israel, 
and were doubtless often pondered by King David, 
who may have seen in himself a fulfillment of the first, 
and derived from the second his first suggestion to re- 
organize the priesthood and establish the worship of 
Jehovah in perfect form on Zion. The house of Eli 
was displaced for ever, and the restored priesthood 
henceforth shared its functions with prophecy. 



PERIOD OF Tin: PROPHETS. 801 

§1. The Covenant with Devoid. 

Jerusalem had been taken by David from the ene- 
mies of Israel, and made the seal of his kingdom. II*' 
is -(•cure in his sovereignty, and dwells in peace in his 

house- of cedar on Zion. And now he desires to build 
Jehovah a house, which shall he the permanent center 
of the restored and reorganized national worship: and 
his heart is tilled, perhaps, with memories of the 
prophecies of Hannah and Samuel. This Is the imme- 
diate occasion, on David's part, of the promise which 
Jehovah now makes to him. The two versions are in 
II Sam. vii, and I Chron. xvii. The first is as follows: 

1 And it came to pass, when the king dwelt in his house, 
and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round 

2 about, that the king said unto Nathan, the prophet, See 
now. I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God 

3 dwelleth within curtains. And Nathan said to the king, Go, 
do all that is within thine heart, for the Lord is with thee. 

1 And it came to pass the same night that the word of the 

5 Lord came unto Nathan, saying, Go and tell my servant 
David, Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build me an house 

6 for me to dweH"in? For I have not dwelt in an house since 
the day that I brought up the children of Israel out of 

•Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a 

7 tabernacle. In all places wherein I have walked with all 
the children of Israel, spake I a word with any of the tribes 
of Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people Israel, say- 

8 ing, Why have ye not built me an house of cedar? Now 
therefore, thus shalt thou say unto my servant David, Thus 
saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from thesheepcote, from 
following the sheep, that thou shouldst be ruler over my 

9 people, over Israel. And I have been with thee whitherso 
ever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies from 
before thee, andw T ill make thee a great name, like unto the 

10 name of the great ones that are in the earth. And I will ap 
point a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that 
they may dwell in their own place, and be moved no more; 



302 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

neither shall the children of wickedness afflict them any 

11 more, as at the first; and as from the day that I commanded 
judges to be over my people Israel; and will cause thee to rest 
from all thine enemies. Moreover, the Lord telleth thee 
that he the Lord, will make thee an house. 

12 When thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with 
thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall 
proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. 

13 He shall build an house for my name, and I will establish 

14 the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be nis father, and 
he shall be my son; if he commit iniquity I will chasten him 
with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of 

15 men; but my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it 

16 from Saul, whom I put away before thee. And thine house 
and thy kingdom shall be made sure for ever before thee; thy 

17 throne shall be established for ever. According to all these 
words, and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak 
unto David. 

Here begins a new stage of development, and a well- 
defined advance in revelation on the part of God, and 
knowledge and culture on the part of the people. 

1. At first David had been chosen only for himself to 
be king, in God's place, over Israel. As had been the 
case with Saul before him, he had not known hitherto 
but that both kino* and kingdom would cease with him- 
self. But here a promise is given to him which in- 
cludes his posterity, and a hereditary monarchy is es- 
tablished. The people of God have a law and land, a 
permanent prophethood. a monarchy, and a local cen- 
ter of worship, where Jehovah is recognized as dwell- 
ing; the organization is completed, and all that remains 
is to develop, refine and advance in spiritual growth. 

2. Formerly Israel as a whole had been recognized 
as Jehovah's son (Ex. iv, 22; Deut. xxxii, 6), one in 
whom Jehovah had proprietary right, and whose ser- 
vice to Him should be priestly and holy, But now 



PERIOD OF THE PHOPIIKTS. 303 



David's Beed Btands to him in thai relation. "I will 
be to him a father, and he shall be to me a Bon." Je- 
hovah would build David a royal house, which house 
in turn should ho his temple-builder. The relation he 
tween them should never be severed. Rut Bin on the 
part of the son, or seed, should he followed by chas- 
tisement. 

3. The promise looked beyond David, beyond any 
one or all of David's sons who succeeded him on the 
literal throne. It is generic; it included David Him- 
self and each one and all his royal sons; the dynasty 
of David should reign for ever, finding at last in Jesus 
Christ an eternal throne. For it was implied that 
there should be in the future One person who should 
fulfill all the requirements of the promise, and that he 
should be of the line of David. 

4 It was never forgot ten. It became not merely a 
tradition, but a part of the permanent literature of Is- 
rael. It became the historic basis of subsequent Mes- 
sianic promises, even as it is the capstone of all former 
ones. Henceforth it is the ground of appeal, and the 
substance of prophecy. There was nothing greater 
than the -'sure mercies of David" (Isa. lv, 3), the rais- 
ing up of the tabernacle of David (Amos ix, 11), the 
raising unto David a righteous Branch (Jer. xxiii, 5j, 
to be again the subjects of David (Hos. Hi, 5) — were 
the substance of all blessings which the people could 
ever long for — and such expressions as these show how 
the 1 prophecy of Nathan affected the subsequent thought 
of Israel. 

David's prayer of thanksgiving, which immediately 
followed the revelation to him of the good new- (ver. 
18-29), and the Psalm recorded in II Sam. xxiii (es- 



304 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

pecially verse 5? show its influence upon himself. 
Notwithstanding the imperfections of his own house, 
the covenant was an everlasting one. arranged in all 
things and sure. There would be a Kighteous One, 
who would rule over men: who would rule in the fear 
of God: who would be as the lis:ht of the cloudless 
morning, when the sun riseth, when the tender grass 
sprinsreth out of the earth through clear shining after 
rain. Such, according to the writer of Second Samuel, 
was the theme of David's meditations. 

The glory of this covenant with David is richly un- 
folded in a second prophetic message to him. contained 
in Psalm ex.* This Psalm represents Jehovah as ad- 
dressing David's Son. who goes forth from Zion as a 
conquering king, at the head of an army of youthful 
volunteers, vast in number, fresh as the dew of the 
morning, and clothed in beautiful garments. He is 
also represented as a priest, not after the order of 
Aaron, but after the manner of Melchizedec — priest 
in his own right, royal priest, in whom both func- 
tions of royalty and priesthood should be eternal. 
Here for the first time it is predicted that the two 
should be united in one person. 

In Psa. ii, we have another Davidic prediction, also 
an inspired echo of the prophecy of Nathan. Here the 
Son of David is the Son of G-od, and his dominion is 
not merely over Israel, but over the world. Here not 
the reigning houze of I Sam. vii, but the reigning Son 
sits at the right hand of Jehovah, laughing in divine 
scorn at the consultations of his enemies against him, 

*The Psalm is undoubtedly Davidic (belonging to the time 
of David), and whether actually written by him or not, its sen- 
timent was indorsed by him (Matt, xxii, 41-46; Mark xii. 35-37). 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHET*. 



wli< jugation i> inevitable. The divine 

ia announced by the Son, which entitles him to all 
the prerogatives of sovereignty, and they are decla 
messed who, "instead of proudly building on their 
own counsel, and on fleshy pow< i strength 

and refuge in the Lord," the greatest benefit of the 
world being the rule of (xodandhisAnnointed. against 
whom it strii 

(S. 

In addition to the Psalms which were directly proph- 
etic of the Messiah, many others are either typical or 
typico-pro] hetic A psalm is said to be typical when 
the experiences which it describes in the life of the 
psalmist are so fashioned as to be made to correspond 
to certain features of the life of the Messiah. A 
typico-prophetic psalm is one in which the experience 

I as to render it unreasonable 
tion if restricted wholly to the life of the psalmist 
himself. It i- by no meal v in many ii - 

t«> distinguish between the typical and typico-proph- 
etic psalms, iK a- are all interpi igreed that there 

any such thii 9 a a directly prophetic psalm. 
To say, however, that the: in the charac- 

ter or experience of the psalmist for his utterano b, - 
by no mean- the same a- denying that there i- in 
them an inspired predictive element; 90 that it mat- 

- little whether we call a given psalm directly 
or simply typico prophetic. Tli 1ms 

may b grouped in the following el 

1. 77" Regal 1 Psa. ii and ex have been coo 

Eodered. Other illustration- are xx. xxi, xxiv, lxxii. 1 



306 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Psalm xx is an invocation on behalf of the king, 
who, it seems, was about to go forth to battle (See II 
Sam. x). The king speaks of himself in the third per- 
son, being intended, perhaps, to be offered by others 
than the king himself, in the public sanctuary. Its 
prophetical aspect consists in the fact that David as 
king was a designed representative of King Messiah, 
in whom Davidic sovereignty over the kingdom of God 
should be continued for ever. David recognized him- 
self in this relation, and hence his wars were holy 
wars. 

The most probable and natural view of Psa. xxi re- 
gards it as a thanksgiving paean, composed and sung in 
gratitude for victory vouchsafed to the king over his 
enemies, in answer to prayer offered in Psa. xx (see II 
Sam. xii, 30). It is Messianic for the same reason, 
and in the same sense as the latter. In verse 8 Jeho- 
vah addresses the king, promising him the final and 
utter destruction of his enemies. 6 'They shall be con- 
sumed as dry straw in the flame of his wrathf ulness, 
for they intended evil against him; they imagined a 
mischievous device, which they cannot perform" (see 
Psa. ii). The second half of the Psalm is, therefore, 
more prominently prophetic, and will yet find its highest 
fulfillment in the destruction of all his foes. The wars 
and triumphs of David were theocratic, and not merely 
personal, and were, therefore, the then present form of 
the church's wars and triumphs, and typical of its 
future. 

Psalm xxiv is a grand choral hymn, composed and 
sung, most probably, on the occasion of the removal of 
the ark to the city of David, on Mount Zion, as de- 
scribed in II Sam. vi, a day of solemn gladness and 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 307 

triumph. It is prophetic, or at least typical, in its 
character, and celebrates the return of Christ, the King 
of Glory, to his heavenly throne. It shall be fully ac- 
complished in the latter days, when all nations shall 
be Israel, and 4i the mountain of the Lord's house 
shall be established in the top of the mountains, and 
shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shal 
flow unto it." (Isa. ii, 2). "The doors of all hearts, all 
temples and all kingdoms shall be thrown wide before 
him; when he shall be acknowledged upon earth as he 
is acknowledged in heaven." — Perowne. 

Psalm xlv represents the Messiah as the Royal 
Bridegroom. It is not an allegory, but is founded on 
an actual occurrence which took place in Israelitish 
history — most probably the marriage of King Solo- 
mon, for it evidently belongs to the most prosperous 
period of the history of Israel. The glories of the 
bridegroom, and the splendors and joys of the mar- 
riage, are the mirror in which the psalmist sees the 
close and affectionate relation in which King Mes- 
siah stands to his people, who are not only Israel, 
but all nations. The Psalm presupposes that the 
Davidic wars of subjection are over, and the sword 
and the spear have been converted into implements 
of peace. This same relation of the Messiah-King to 
his people is presented in the Canticle form, not of 
a Psalm, but of a more extended dramatic idyl, which 
could scarcely have been better suggested by any pe- 
riod of Israelitish history than the peaceful and joy- 
ous and sinless days of Solomon's earliest reign. The 
Oriental mind was not unaccustomed to the presenta- 
tion of spiritual truth and sentiment under this nup- 
tual imagery. At various periods of Old Testament 



308 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

history God speaks of himself, through the prophets, 
as the Bridegroom of his. people as a whole (not of 
an individual; Isa. liv, 5; lxii, 5; Jer. iii, 1; Ezek. xvi, 
8; etc.) And in the New Testament Christ speaks of 
himself as the Bridegroom, and of the Church as a 
bride, and likens the kingdom o? God, in certain of its 
aspects, to a marriage feast (Matt, xxi, If; xxv; ix, 15; 
Eph. v, 32; II Cor. xi, 2; Eev. xix, 7; xxi, 2). 

In Psalm lxxii the peaceful Solomon is about to suc- 
ceed the warrior David, and here we have a prayer in 
his behalf, and a prophetic description of his peaceful 
and prosperous reign, and in such terms as could find 
their fulfillment only in David's other and greater Son. 
The King Messiah and his kingdom, as presented in 
the Old Testament, are like the "kingdom of heaven," 
in the New Testament, which needs many parables, in 
order that it may be presented in many aspects, pres- 
ent and future. So in the Old, many parables, or 
types, or illustrations are needed to show forth the 
King Messiah in his many sidedness, to say nothing of 
the same Messiah as Prophet and Priest. 

2. The Passion Psalms. But the Messiah in the 
Psalms is not only a King; he is also a Sufferer. u As 
David rose to glory only through the heaviest perse- 
cutions, and was forced through his eventful life to 
drink the cup of affliction to the dregs," so also did it 
behoove the Messiah, in his several-fold character, to 
be ' 'made perfect through suffering. " The psalmist's 
own bitter experiences become the natural basis of in- 
spired descriptions of experiences yet more bitter, and 
which find adequate fulfillment only in the humilia- 
tions and sufferings of the Man of Sorrows. If the 
inspired psalmists, whether kings or prophets, had 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETti. 309 

never suffered, they, perhaps, would never have seen 
the suffering side of the life of Him who was to come. 
They could gel glimpses into the mystery of his suffering 

only by viewing it through experiences of their own. 

(l.)» Psalm lxix is a striking illustration of this class 
of Psalms. Here is intense mockery, shame, poverty, 
sorrowfulness on the part of the innocent sufferer. 
He is hated, despised, maltreated without cause; or, 
rather, because of his fidelity to God and zeal for his 
house (ver. 7, 9). And yet he is abandoned by God 
to his enemies. They persecute him only more and 
more. But at last the reward comes; his enemies in- 
cur their doom, and the song of deliverance is sung in 
the great congregation, and heaven and earth are called 
upon to praise him. Regarding the Psalm as not 
merely typical, but as typico-prophctic, it is as appli- 
cable to David as it is to Jeremiah or any other suffer- 
ing prophet; there being no reason why exact cor- 
respondence should be sought in the life of anyone. 
It is not only history, or fact; it is also poetry; and 
hence it might have been the inspired product of any- 
one of sufficient poetic genius, who though not a suf- 
ferer himself, was a witness to suffering in the life of 
others. 

(2.) But while the holy sufferer was, as such, a rep- 
resentative of him who was despised and rejected of 
men, he was not in all respects a representative, and 
hence a given Psalm may not in all respects be either 
typical or prophetic. Psalm xl, 12, is an illustration 
of the exception as to details which must sometimes be 
made. While the Psalm as a whole is closely parallel to 
Psa. lxix, verse 12 cannot be regarded as having a 
typical or prophetic reference to Jesus of Nazareth, un- 



310 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

less, indeed, it be in the sense that he made our iniqui 
ties his own; or in other words, in the sense that the 
iniquities which were his, not actually, but by adop- 
tion, took hold upon him. 

(3.) But in Psa. xxii we have the most evident and 
interesting illustration of this class of Psalms. Here 
we have suffering heaped upon suffering, the intensely 
anguished soul breaking forth at the very outset with 
a cry of unutterable loneliness and despair; and yet 
closing (verse 22ff) with expressions of hope and exul- 
tation, as if the rainbow were visible even here in the 
midst of the fierce storm ; and as if out of his very suf- 
ferings should come the recognition of him among the 
peoples not yet born. 

It matters little if no exact parallel to the experience 
depicted in the Psalm is found in David's life; nor in 
order that we may attribute the Psalm to him is it 
necessary for us to suppose that he was here summing 
up the bitter experiences of a lifetime. David might 
well have written it. He had known enough of suf- 
fering, both by observation and experience, to form a 
natural basis for the Psalm; and, to say nothing of his 
inspiration, it better suits the style of his exalted and 
yet sensitive and intense poetic genius than that of any 
other poet in Israel. The sufferings depicted in the 
Psalm are ideal sufferings; they look beyond the bitter 
experiences of all kings and prophets, and find actual 
realization only in the sufferings of Jesus, the despised 
Nazarene. 

(4.) Other Passion Psalms which may be studied in 
this connection are iii, vi, vii, xii, liv, lvi, lvii, etc. , in 
all of which Messianic suffering, with varying inten- 
sity, is depicted. In one the sufferer flees from his 



THE MOSAIC PERIOD. :ill 



own people, who refuse to have him as their King; 

in another he feels sensible of his weakness, his soul 
is sore vexed, and he is weary with groaning; in 
another he prays to be delivered from his persecutors, 
lest they tear his soul like a lion, rending it in 
pieces; in another his enemies hide themselves, mark- 
ing his steps, lying in wait for him. The object, 
however, of the Messianic suffering is not stated in 
these Psalms, the suffering being represented only as 
caused by the opposition and persecution of a wicked 
world. 

3. The Ideal Man. There are two Psalms, con- 
spicuously, in which the Messiah as the ideal man is 
presented. He is not divine, nor a king, nor a suf- 
fering prophet or priest. He is the perfect Man, 
who in his humility is a little lower than the divine 
ones (Psa. viii), in whom the human race finds it< 
ideal self, forfeited and lost by the fall of the first. In 
finding this it shall find its original endowment of 
dominion. We may see in the Psalm, doubtless, a 
reminiscence on the part of the writer of the Mosaic 
account of the origin of the first man, who was cre- 
ated so nearly divine as to be in the image and like- 
ness of God, and to whom was granted universal do- 
minion. 

Psalm xvi is the utterance of one who recognizes 
that he has no good beyond Jehovah, of one who has 
set Jehovah before him always. u The whole Psalm 
is bright with the utterance of a happiness which noth- 
ing can touch," and who recognizes himself already as 
triumphant in death. The Psalmist think- of a resur- 
rection in verses 9, 10, and of a blessed experience of 
communion with God after death. Peter, in Acts ii, 



812 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



30, 31, distinctly affirms that these verses were con- 
sciously spoken by the Psalmist of Christ. He is 
the One in whom, as in Psalm viii, the lot and destiny 
of the perfect man is first realized. 



B. THE MEDIATIVE, OR SUBJECTIVE ELEMKNT. 

Characteristic. 

Here prophecy loses its predictive element. It is no 
longer a hope, or something loqked forward to as per- 
taining to the Messianic King and kingdom. It is a 
present possession which engages the writer's thought, 
either an inheritance from former ages, or a fresh con- 
templation of divine things, awakened by the immedi- 
ate inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is embodied, for 
the most part, in the books of Job, Ecclesiastes, Prov- 
erbs, some of the Psalms, and the Song of Songs. It 
is commonly called the Hebrew Wisdom, and is the 
reflection of a divine light upon the great subjects 
which have to a greater or less extent engaged 
the thoughts of men of all ages. It corresponds, 
therefore, somewhat to the speculative and practical 
theodicy and ethics of other nations. The books of 
this class, particularly Job and Ecclesiastes, may seem 
to the casual reader hard to understand, but the fact 
that they are in the Bible makes it a complete book, 
and it ought to be regarded as one evidence that the 
Bible is the Book of God. Had they been absent, man, 
as he stands in the presence of many perplexing mys- 
teries, might have felt that his natural and longing in- 
quiries are not only left unanswered, but that they 



PERIOD OF THE PR0PHBT8. 

even were ignored. This fad will probably appear 
more evident as we advance in our studies. 

§1. Th* Davidic Theology. (Doctrlm of Ggd. I 

Nothing could be purer, more exalted and vivid than 
the conception of the Divine Being and his various 
perfections, as presented in the literature of this pe- 
riod; though here, as elsewhere, it is necessary to dis- 
tinguish between the inspired teaching and the view 
held by the average uninspired Israelite. Samuel, the 
.hticst spirit of his age, and one of the mightiest of 
any aire, introduced a wholly new era in Hebrew 
thought and civilization, and his impress is ever after- 
ward visible in the didactic and ethical sphere no less 
than in the strictly prophetic. Every thing subsequent 
to him was, on its natural side, an outgrowth from him. 
Whether they ever attended his schools or not, David 
and Nathan were his pupils. It was what he said and 
did that made the latter possible. And yet both he 
and they were already in advance of the mass of their 
contemporaries. From thetime of Samuel until the mid- 
dle years of Solomon there is little sign of polytheistic 
tendency or idolatrous practice in Israel: but the very 
fact that even Solomon should have introduced again 
the worship of false gods, is a proof that notwithstand- 
ing the exalted monotheism of the psalms of this pe- 
riod, monotheism was not yet the exclusive and deeply 
rooted faith of Israel. How Solomon, or even the first 
Jeroboam, could have read these Psalms, after ha\ 
them sung, perhaps, in the temple-service, and yet en- 
danger the very life of the nation by introducing the 
worship of other gods, can be explained only by say- 
ing, Great is the power of Bin. Even that part of the 



314 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

Psalms which belongs to the Davidic period, and with 
which Solomon was well acquainted, if not in part the 
composer, presents God as the only God, and testifies 
directly or indirectly against every form of idolatry 
and the inward vanity of earthly comfort and pros- 
perity, to which Solomon seems to have fallen so lam- 
entable a victim. It glows with testimonials to the 
power of God, and his providence, his love and faith 
fulness, his holiness and righteousness. The following 
points may be more specifically noticed: 

1. The Names of the Divine Being. The Davidic 
Psalms are for the most part Jehovistic, the name Je- 
hovah being by far the most usual name by which the 
Divine Being is addressed or spoken of. But the fact 
that the name Elohim, or God, also occurs in many of 
these Psalms, shows that the two names might often 
be safely used interchangeably, especially in as much 
as Jehovah was fast coming to be recognized as the 
only God. Especially, however, would we expect to 
find the name Jehovah wherever the Psalmist wished 
to speak to or of the Divine Being as One who 
stands in covenant and loving relation to Israel — just 
as we would often prefer the name Father, rather than 
the name God. At any rate, in no case in these or in 
any of the Psalms is the use of the name Elohim to be 
referred to the supposed incipient and growing super- 
stition which afterward prevented the Jews from using 
the name Jehovah at all. The truth is, that as Israel 
became more and more a rigidly monotheistic people, 
the two names would become more and more nearly 
identical in significance; and as the name Elohim 
ceased to be associated with heathen gods, it might be 
a matter of individual habit or taste as to which of the 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 815 



two a writer would use, But the Davidic Psalmist 
loves the old Mosaic memorial name, Jehovah, the God 
of Israel, as distinguished from the elohim of the an- 
jacent heathen, with whom Israel, in those days, was 

in such tierce contention. 

But it is during this period that the new name, Je- 
hovah-Sabbaoth (Lord of Hosts), is introduced. It 
occurs for the first time in I Sam. i, 3, and thereafter 
many times, being a favorite title with the prophet. 
The term host (whether singular or plural) is some- 
times used to designate the angels, sometimes the stars, 
and also the host or armies of Israel; but as a name of 
the Divine Being, it designates him, not as the one 
who rules the stars, or is able to command legions of 
angels to do his bidding, or as leading the armies of 
Israel; it designates him rather as one who is a host in 
himself. It is the name Jehovah incorporating into itself 
the name Elohim, thereby emphasizing the fact wherever 
the name is used, that Jehovah is not merely the faithful 
covenant God of Israel, but that he also possesses al- 
mighty power over the whole universe, whether ani- 
mate or inanimate, rational or irrational. The histori- 
cal basis of the title, however, is doubtless to be found 
in the fact that Israel, from the beginning of their his- 
tory in Canaan, recognized Jehovah as being the leader 
of their host in battle, and the one who gained for 
them victory over their enemies. War was a large part 
of their occupation: and Jehovah, their God, was a 
God of war. 

2. The Divine Relation to the World. The Psalms 
emphasize the relation of God, not only to Israel, but 
to the world, as exhibited in both general and special 
providences. This, indeed, is largely the theme of the 



316 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

psalter as a whole, as it is of the hymnody of the later 
church. There is nothing in the Psalms akin to the 
Epicurean theodicy, which places God wholly apart 
from the world; nor with Pantheism, in any of its 
forms, which identifies God with the world. God is 
not aloof from nature; and he is not nature, nor is 
nature he. He rules over nature and in nature, the 
Psalms teach; and yet there is no machinery, no sys- 
tem of second causes mentioned or referred to. God 
is ever in the foreground. He created all things; he 
upholds all things; his watchful care is ever over all 
things, and he guides all things to the accomplishment 
of his will. In his relation to the church, i 'He that 
keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep;" and as 
for the individual man who lives in loving allegiance 
to him, Jehovah is his Shepherd, he does not want; 
Jehovah guides him, delivers him, and protects him 
against aSl his enemies. As the mountains are round 
about Jerusalem, so is Jehovah round about them that 
fear him. 

But he is also presented in the relation of Judge, 
particularly in the Psalms of David's singer, Asaph; 
a righteous Judge, exercising judgment for his own 
glory, both in Israel and among the nations. In the 
defense and deliverance of his people he comes m the 
judgment of devouring flame. 

The doctrine of Divine providence, in its broadest 
and narrowest senses, finds its clearest and highest ex- 
pression in the theology of the Psalms — as, indeed, we 
might easily expect it to do; for it appeals most nearly 
of all doctrines, perhaps, to the heart of man, especi- 
ally the Hebrew heart, and finds readiest expression in 
poetry. And yet there were mysteries and harrowing 



PERIOD OF THE PB0PHET8. 817 

doubts afloat in the thought even of the Davidic ace, 
as wo Bhall see in a subsequent section. The mas 
of the people were not inspired, and those who were, 
were not vouchsafed Inspired answers to all problems. 

:'>. Personal Attributes, The holiness of God is also 
emphasized il Sam. ii, 2; vi, 20; Psa. \, I; xxii, 3, 
etc.); his justice (Job viii, 3; xxiii, 6; Psa. ix, -4 ; xi, 7, 
etc.); and his love as exhibited in goodness, mercy, 
long-suffering (Psa. xxv, 8; Ixxxvi, 5, etc.) 

4. The Diviiu Spirit, In the theology of this pe- 
riod, as in the Mosaic, the Spirit of God is the univer- 
sal basis of life. Thou sendest forth thy Spirit and 
they are created, and thou renewest the faee of the 
ground (Psa. civ, 30), the result of the withdrawal of 
the Spirit being death (vcr. 20). So also does the 
spirit, or life, in man have as its originating activity 
the Spirit of God; the former being not an emanation 
of the latter, not in any sense identical with it, hut 
caused by it | Keel, xii, 7; Job xxxiv, 1-t; Psa. civ 29). 
The Spirit of God is ''the original source to which ev- 
ery endowment of man's physical, mental and moral 
life is referred." The Spirit of God is also divine, in 
the sense of being God, but is not explicitly so identi- 
fied until a later period (Ezek. iii, 24-27); but he is a 
personality, possessing divine attributes, as omnipres- 
ence (Psa. exxxix, 7'; goodness (Psa, cxl, 10); holii 
(Psa. Ii, 11). But the Divine spirit is not understood 
here, or elsewhere in the Old Testament, as the Holy 
Spirit of the New Testament — the trinitarian second 
Person of the Godhead. And yet the Spirit of God is 
everywhere the Holy Spirit, except where it is an evi 
dent periphresis for God himself. 



318 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

§2. The Davidic Doctrine Concerning the Moral 
and Ceremonial Law. 

The law, so far as here considered, is to be regarded 
under two aspects, the moral and ceremonial. 

1. TJie Moral Law. We are obliged to suppose 
that David, and the other writers of this period, were 
acquainted with the moral and ceremonial laws, as set 
forth in the Pentateuch. The allusions to them are 
too numerous and direct to be accounted for on any 
other hypothesis. To say, in order to avoid this con- 
clusion, that all the Psalms and other writings contain- 
ing these references were written during the time of 
King Josiah, or even after the Babylonian exile, is to 
say that of which there is far from being any adequate 
proof. To say that both the system of law and the 
Psalm literature were the production of a comparatively 
late period of Israel's history, is to place upon this 
period a burden of intellectual activity too grievous to 
be borne, besides presupposing an unwarrantable de- 
gree of intellectual idleness on the part of the former 
ages. To justify this a more conclusive literary evi- 
dence than has hithero been adduced is needed. 

The second half of Psalm xix abounds in praises of 
the law. Psa. cxix, whatever may be its date, is only 
an elaborate expansion of the second half of the other 
Psalm. And with such testimony to the law the 
whole Psalter is pervaded (Psa. xxv, 10; xxxviii, 31; 
1, 16, lxxviii, 1, 5; etc.) The man on whom the high- 
est blessedness is pronounced is the man who delights 
in the law of Jehovah, and meditates in it day and 
night. And yet the Psalmists and the Apostle Paul 
are in harmony, for Paul was by no means an Anti- 



PERIOD OP THE PROPHETS 819 



nomian. He, too, delighted in the law after the inner 
man (Rom. vii, 12, 22), and regarded it as holy, just 
and good. But Paul and the Psalmists regarded the 
law from two different points of view. "David does 
not speak of the law as opposed to the gospel, but of 
the law as including the promise [or gospel]. To him 
the law is not merely tln^ code, the hare* precepts, hut 
thi' whole revelation of God, so far as it was then 
given, including Christ himself, on whom the adopt ion 
of Israel rested. St. Paul, on the other hand, had to 
do with perverse interpreters of the law, who were for 
separating it from the grace and spirit of Christ; 
whereas, apart from Christ, the law, inexorable in its 
requirements, can only expose the whole world to 
God's wrath and curse."* To the Psalmist the law 
was simply the reflection of the pure and perfect and 
holy will of God, to which his heart and conscience 
consented, but of the true spiritual meaning of which 
the gospel has undoubtedly given us a deeper view 
than the majority, at least, of the Old Testament peo- 
ple had. 

2. The Ceremonial Law. The attitude of the 
Psalmist toward the ceremonial law is not such as to 
indicate that he attached any importance to its out- 
ward observance, only in so far as such observance was 
the expression of an inward spiritual import. Of this 
spirit he does b ive a thorough appreciation. Accord- 
ing to Samuel before him, the Lord had delight in 
burnt offerings and sacrifices, but yet more in obedi- 
ence to his voice (I Sam. XV, 22); and David himself 
says, under deepest sense of personal guilt. "The sac- 
rifices of Grod are a broken spirit: a broken and a con- 

*Calvin, quoted by Perowne. 



320 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

trite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. " (Psa. li, 17); 
while in comparison with these, or apart from these, 
he delighted not in sacrifices and took no pleasure in 
burnt offerings. 

See also Psa. 1, 8-14. The Psalmist recognizes that 
the law, in none of its aspects, can so effectually guide 
and supplement his own exertions as to preserve him 
from sin. He needs an inward cleansing and an addi- 
tional and abiding grace from above, the grace of God's 
Holy Spirit (li, 2-12; xix, 12, 13). But this close and 
intimate union of the Spirit of God with his spirit 
would make his spirit both willing and steadfast, and 
able to discern the law in all its aspects as being no 
arbitrary rule of bondage, but rather u a charter and 
instrument of liberty" — a view entirely coincident with 
that of Paul. 

The Psalmist, therefore, and the enlightened Israel- 
ites generally, evidently did not regard the sacrifices as 
having, in the case of those who offered them in peni- 
tence and faith, a spiritual efficacy — any more than 
there is in our own Christian water baptism, the recip- 
ient of which is a believing penitent. "Their only 
efficacy, as it seems to me," Perowne rightly says,* u was 
the efficacy which the law itself assigned to them;" 
they were the instruments of restoring him when he 
transgressed, to his place as a member of the theo- 
cracy, a citizen of the visible kingdom of God. But 
they did not confer, or convey, the remission of sins. 
They were external, and their efficacy was external. 
They were typical, no doubt, of Christ's sacrifice; and 
the forgiveness which they procured, and which resulted 
in the re-admission of an offender to the privilege of his 

Com. on the Psalms, vol. 1, 3d London Edi., W.'F. Draper. 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 821 

Jewish citizenship, was typical of the forgiveness of sin 
under the gospel dispensation. But it is no less certain 
thai the legal sacrifice did not lake the place in the Old 
Testament of the sacrifice of Christ in the New, that it 
was not through this legal sacrifice that the Old Testa- 
meut believer looked for the forgiveness of his sins. 
Had it been bo, we could not have found the constant 
opposition between sacrifice and obedience, the studied 
depreciation of sacrifices, which meets us everywhere 
in the Psalms and the prophets, and which is, in fact, 
fully confirmed by the whole argument of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews. IIoav far the Jewish believer saw 
into the typical meaning of his sacrifice, is a question 
which cannot now be answered. It is, however, some- 
what remarkable that the prophets, earnestly as they 
expostulated with the people on the subject of their 
sacrifices, never say one word on this aspect of them, 
never speak of this their hidden meaning. But the 
typical meaning and the real efficacy are two very dif- 
ferent things. "In truth . . if we assign to the 
type the virtue of the antetypc, if we make the remis- 
sion of sins procured by the one co-extensive with the 
remission of sins procured by the other, we destroy 
the type altogether. The sacrifice had no moral value. 
Hence the Psalmist says, not sacrifice, but a broken 
heart. Could he have said this if through the sacrifice 
he looked for forgiveness of -in ?" His hope of par- 
don was based on his sincere repentance, and the love 
of God, and his revealed and believed purpose of re. 
demption (xxxii; exxx . His plea was the Divine 
Name — the revelation of himself as a God of love and 
grace. "For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon me." 



322 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

(Psa. xxv, 11; xxxi, 3; etc.) And this revelation was 
afterward called Christ. 

This emphasized attitude of the Psalmists toward the 
ceremonial law suggests what is expressly and repeat- 
edly taught in regard to sin, viz: that it is not merely 
an affair of the outward life, but has its deep 
seat in the inward workings of the heart (Psa. 
xxxvi), and is to be ascribed primarily to man's inate 
conception (h, 5; lvm, 2, 3). It shows itself in deeds, 
in words, and m thoughts; nor is even the believer 
able to discern all its hidden and various ramifications 
(xiv; xvii, 3, cxli; cxxxix; etc.) 

§3. Retribution. 

The Psalms teach the doctrine of a righteous retri- 
bution, or recompense, to all men according to their 
deeds (Psa xxxvn, 2ff). This recompense is dispensed 
mainly during the present life, yet not wholly; it is 
perpetuated to the children of the evil doers and of the 
righteous (xxv, 13; cix, 12; etc.) The doctrine of ret- 
ribution after death is implied, rather than distinctly 
taught. In the imprecatory Psalms retribution is in- 
voked upon the wicked (xxxv; cix), where David speaks, 
however, not in his private and personal capacity, but in 
his representative or Messianic character, as the king 
of God's kingdom m Israel, and whose enemies were 
God's enemies. His historical position, calling and 
situation rendered it as necessary and as justifiable in 
him to invoke retributive justice upon his enemies as it 
was for the Messiah himself actually to inflict it. It is 
as right for the typical Messiah to pray for victory 
which would result in the utter extermination of his 
enemies as it is for the actual Messiah to win such a 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 323 

victory. As for the details of these prayers, they are 
only the form and color of the local circumstances and 
the peculiar east of an oriental mind. In the Old Tes- 
tament it is the judgment of God upon the enemies of 
his kingdom that stands in the foreground, whereas in 
the New it is rather his grace; but in the Old, as also 
finally in the New, it is supposed that the enemy is im- 
placable; and hence, in order that the kingdom of God 
itself may not be overthrown, it is necessary that the 
prayer for just judgment should at last prevail over 
the prayer for mercy. The difference between the Old 
Testament and the New here referred to is not due to 
any essential difference of spirit in the two dispensa- 
tions; that is the same in the one as in the other, long- 
ing always for the salvation of the enemies of God-, 
their dot ruction being only a last resort. But in the 
Old Testament the circumstances of God's visible king- 
dom were already such that this resort to destruction, 
rather than mercy, was already the last resort. The 
Psalmisl prayed through the medium of his own present, 
and there were not within the range of his horizon any 
enemies who recognized themselves as being in need of 
mercy, and hence they could not be its recipients; 
when the New Testament kingdom of God, which is 
only the continuation of the Old under another form, 
is assailed in like manner, a n</ by such foes, the same 
prayer may well be offered again. And is it not al- 
ready constantly offered ' Surely it is; only the form 
in which the prayer is cast is changed, because in 
point of time and place we are living far from where 
the old prayer was offered. To translate into English 
i^ not identical with translating it into the nineteenth 
century and the Western hemisphere. 



OLD IE S TAMEST STUDIES. 

H. T 3 7 hire L 

The literature of this period, particularly the Psalms 
. Ecclesiastes. is characterized by about the same 
relative number of allusions and the same deliniteness 
of allusions to immortality and the future life, as the 
great body of ancient and modern Christian hyrans. 
In neither the Old Testament nor the Xew are the de- 
tails of the life hereafter given: and it was manifestly 
best that much should not be revealed. So, perhaps, 
was it impossible, in the very nature of the case, 
that much should be revealed. God could not reveal 
v to man without causing to be used anthrop- 
omorphic and anthropopathic forms of expression; he 
used terms which literally were applicable only to man. 
But if he had revealed in more definite detail and ex- 
plicitness than has been done, the future place, or the 
future mode, of existence, it would necessarily have 
been done in large part in terms of this life and of 
this world. And we can see plainly, that this would 
at least have had a tendencv to encourage the wild 
and gross conceptions of heaven which characterize 
and deform the heathen theologies, and even the 
religion of Mohammed. The one born blind can- 
not distinguish colors, nor can he who was born deaf 
be caused to have any knowledge of musical sounds, 
nor c a -tract definitions and descriptions convey to 
such a one any clear conception of these things. 

But as man recognizes God. so does he also and for 
the same reason recognize a future. As God revealed 
himself to man. so also did he in that very revelation. 
whether natural or supernatural, reveal the fact of 
another world, which is future in respect to the 



THE PEB10D OF TEE PBOPHM 00 

thought of .iiiv given living man. but i^> parallel to 

- one in respect to the continuous race. It 
fating contemporaneously with Abraham, and v. 

they departed from this world, tli t thither. It 

intil Christ said it to the caviling Sadu- 
I the living, and n< I 
the dead;" but the thought had always o vaguely, 
if not definitely in the human mind. In ling 

himself he re vealed that other world where he is; and 
tht* Divine -elf-revelation brought God and the other 
world in recognized relation, not merely to the race or 
to Israel, but to the individual. It was not merely the 
collective, visible, organized people of God that 1 
for ever; but the entrant I God into relation with 
man, and the communion of man with God, was un- 
derstood to imply his individual immortality. 

And the fact that bo little empb - s, apparently, - 
placed in the Old Testament Scriptures on this 
trine of individual immortality, in the sei - unend- 

_ continuance of persona] identity, is no evidence that 
not everywhere present in th< 9eS fc It is 

the fundamental postulate, not only of the in-p 
hymn-, as in the Psalms, and in the inspire illa- 

tions, as in E tea, but of the whole Old 

ment revelation. Without this essential basal postu- 

. it could not proceed. Without it. the Old T 
ment revelation is an enigma which admit- of no solu- 
tion. - ially if _ _rin with, that it is 
supernatural, and not simply a history of a j 'a en- 
deavor to L r r"w. a striving to express Its a a I the 
mystery of things. 

In this v: t. it i- apparent the per- 

sonal religion, which tinds undying expression esped- 



326 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

ally in the Psalms, "is nourished by the spring of a 
firm hope of eternal life, and that that hope filled and 
cheered the hearts of God's people from the first ages 
of the church. " There can be no religion where there 
is no belief in a personal immortality; and while the 
Old Testament writers, including the Psalmist and the 
Preacher, here and there give expression to what may 
seem to be shadowy doubts, they never give expression 
to anything that partakes of the nature of positive dis- 
belief. Their religion would have forbidden it, even 
had they not been inspired. Such a passage as Psa. 
vi, 5, is no evidence to the contrary. "For in death 
there is no remembrance of thee; in sheol who shall 
give thee thanks V is only a natural and emphatic way 
whereby the Psalmist would express his desire of pres- 
ent deliverance, and of praising God in this life, what 
ever might be true of the hereafter. So also of Psa. 
xxx, 9; lxxxviii, 10-12; Psa. lxxxix, 47, 48, is only an 
expression of the brevity of life and the certainty of 
death. Psalm cxv, 17, is the Psalmist's version of the 
thought expressed by our Saviour himself, when he 
said: "I work the work of him that sent me while it is 
day; for the night comoth when no man can work." 
(Jno ix, 4.) In this life is our opportunity — the one, 
at least, that deserves and must have present empha- 
sis. Ecclesiastes ix, 5, contemplates^ though gloomily,- 
u only the physical aspect, or the physical side of death, 
such as presents itself sometimes to the Christian, 
without any feeling of inconsistency, and without im- 
pairing that hope of future life, which he possesses in 
a higher degree than [he whom the Preacher represents 
himself as personating]. We ma}^ even say that it is 



PBB10D OF THE PROPHET 8. B89 

good for us, occasionally . to fix our minds <>n this mere 

physical aspect of our frail humanity. 

Oh, when shall spring visit thr mouldering ruin? 
Oh, when shall day dawn on the eight of the grave? 

It was not an infidel, but a devout believer, that 
wrote t lii—. And >o. too, there may be at times a sort 
of melancholy pleasure in thinking of death mainly in 
ispect of repose from the toils and anxieties of the 
present stormy life; as that mournful dirge, so often 
sung at funerals: 

Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb; 

Take this new treasure to thy breast: 
And give these sacred relics room 

To slumber in thy silent dust. 
Nor pains, nor grief, nor anxious fear 

Invade thy bounds; no mortal woes 
Can reach the peaceful sleeper here. 

We feel no inconsistency between such strains, even 

when they assume a more sombre aspect, and that 
brighter view which the Christian takes in contemplat- 
ing the spiritual side of our strange human destiny "* 
And this brighter view is expressly presented in 
many passages of the Old Testament, particularly in 
the writings of the Psalmists and the Preacher. For I 
am a stranger with thee, a sojourner, as all my fathers 
were" (Psa xxxix, L2), which means, here, as it did 
with the ancient patriarchs, that the speaker's face was 
set toward the better Country, and that his citizenship 
was not on earth, but in heaven. ''They that Bay such 
things make it manifest that they are seeking after a 
country of their own" — that IS a heavenly (Ileb. ix, 

14-16). Still more explicit is the language of David 

in Psa. wii. !:». "As for me. I shall behold thy face in 
*Taylor Lewis, in tin- Lange Com. on Eccl< 



328 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with 
thy likeness." And of Asaph, in Psa. lxxiii, 24, 25, 
and of David again in Psa. xvi, 9-11. See also Psa. 
xlix, 15. To say that such expressions as these have 
no reference to the life beyond the grave is to make 
them flat and meaningless. u The Psalter glows every- 
where with a brightness which nothing could have im- 
parted except a deep presentiment of eternal life." 
(Binnie). But the Psalms are designed more especi- 
ally to nurture communion with God in this present 
life, and, like the Scriptures generally, they presup- 
pose, rather than expressly teach, the doctrine of con- 
tinued personal existence after death. 

§5. The Inequalities of Human Life. 

In the sacred books, particularly of the period which 
we are now discussing, this subject, so perplexing to 
the universal heart of man, is by no means left un- 
touched. We shall briefly consider it here under the 
two-fold aspect of the prosperity of the wicked and the 
suffering of the innocent. u The Hebrew mind had 
never risen to the conception of universal law, but was 
accustomed to regard all visible phenomena as the im- 
mediate result of a free sovereign will. Direct inter- 
position, even arbitrary interference, was no difficulty 
to the Jew, to whom Jehovah was the absolute sov- 
ereign of the world, not acting, so far as he could see, 
according to any established order." And he had 
been taught from the very infancy of the nation that 
Jehovah was not only Sovereign, but that he was also 
a righteous God, administering the affairs of his moral 
government according to the principles of immutable 
justice and righteousness; and this had become his 



PB 11 loi) OF TUH PROPHETS. 829 



abiding and one of his cardinal belief-. But how 
could lie reconcile it with the observed facts of human 
experience? The wicked prospered; the innocent Buf- 
fered. This it was that puzzled him. 

1. This is the problem raised in Psa. \.\\\ ii the 
prosperity of the wicked. Those whom we should ex- 
pect to receive judgment receive blessing. "Fret not 
thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, be- 
cause of the man who bringeth wicked devices to 
pass;" fret not thyself, for nothing but evil can come 
of fretting (ver. 7, 8). And the advice given in view 
of the prosperity of these wicked ones is "to wait;" 
be not too hasty in forming an estimate of their pros- 
perity; it is only for a brief season; trust in the Lord; 
look to the end; for soon God will vindicate his 
righteousness by rewarding the godly and punishing 
the wicked. But the Psalmist himself seem- to have 
fretted, for the problem was not solved; there was 
only an appeal to his faith; every seeming mystery 
will be clearly understood in the end. But the test 
was severe. "As for me, my feet were almost gone; 
my step- had well nigh slipped. For I was envious 
at the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the 
wicked" (Psa. lxxiii, 2 fl'.). They are in no seeming 
peril of death; they are lusty and strong, etc. But, as 
for me, in vain have I cleansed my heart, and washed 
my hands in innocency. My righteou>ne>s has yielded 
me no profit. I have been plagued all the day long, 
and these wicked oiks are not plagued at all. As the 
Psalmist thought upon these things, in order that he 
might know the mystery, he could not find it. His 
brain only grew wearier and his heart heavier with 
pondering. His refuge was in the sanctuary- the 



330 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 



place "where God teaches (ver. 17); and there, in some 
hour of fervent, secret prayer, or perhaps in listening 
to the cianting of some inspired Psalm, a conviction 
of the truth broke upon him. He sees the end. The 
prosperity of the ungodly is clearly shown to be only 
an appearance. It abides but a little while, vanishing 
like the fabric of a vision before the terrible reality, 
when God arises to judgment. "It is made manifest 
also that it is absurd and unreasonable in the highest 
decree, for us _to allow ourselves to be irritated and 
deceived by such a show of prosperity. We thus 
learn, too, that everything depends upon our thus 
recognizing God as our true and everlasting good, 
upon our seeking, holding fast to. and proclaiming 
Him as such. For he whose life is bound up in the 
Person of the Eternal can never perish, but must only 
rise from one height to another until he becomes a 
partaker of the glory of God " (C. B. Moll). But the 
question, TThy should the wicked be so prosperous and 
happy? is not answered. But the fact is shown to be, 
in the long run. in harmony with the righteousness of 
God, and thereby its perplexing feature is minimized. 
The Psalmist is no longer envious, seeing that it is 
better to be holden by his right hand, and guided by 
his counsel, and afterwards received into glory, than 
to be prosperous for a little season. 

But a remarkable, if not an unexpected feature of 
the solution, so far at least as the wicked are con- 
cerned, is that their little season of prosperity term- 
inates even before their life in this world. Instead of 
following them into the next world, as does the parable 
of our Saviour in the case of Lazarus and the rich man, 
where we know that all apparent unfairness is ad- 



PI OF THE PROPHETS. 01 

justed, the recompense is seen only on thi< side of the 

w. The Psalmist -till occupies the standpoint of 

the Mosaic doctrine of a retribution to be administered, 

u as il is indicated, only in thi> life And this 
w;h. as yet, according to the design of God, of wh 
righteousness enough had been revealed in hist 
otherwise, to enable his people for the present to take 
the unknown on faith. After a while, more would be 
revealed, and yet after a while more will be revealed. 
But here for tin 1 present God concealed himself, as m 
the later parables of the kingdom, in order that he 
might be found of those who Bought him. The sin 
seeker could know enough of the mystery of the inequal- 
ities of human lot to rest easy m the faith of His right- 
eousnesa The wisdom of the Psalmist in fixing his in- 
d vision on the recompense of the wicked as ad- 
ministered this - of the grave most be apparent. 
"That this Idom done, even by the well-disposed, 

that even they are BO much inclined to look upon the 
righteousness of God as inoperative in this life, i- a 
melancholy proof of the degeneracy of the Church, i 
of the lamentable prevalence of infidelity" (Hengsten- 
_r). God is not unjust in this world that he ma) 
he just in the next lie is just now. and hence, i- 
just ever. It is this fact that the Psalmist's solution 
of the *• painful mystery" tea* I 

'i. But the mystery abides. It i- not the wicked 
and the righteous both who prosper. The right 
Buffer. Those who have sinned not; neither their 
fathi S -t the Bufferer, whose mind was 

us to it-elf of rectitude, knew; hut not such 
the* current opinion; not such was the customary 
interpretation of the Mosaic doctrine of retribution, to 



332 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

the unsatisfactory incompleteness of which the faith of 
some was scarcely equal. And Job was among the 
number, about whose experience the discussion of the 
mystery of suffering on the part of the innocent is 
made to hinge in an elaborate epic-drama, which 
must be regarded as a classic equal to that of any 
literature.* 

(1.) The scene is laid, in the first place, in the in- 
visible world. Job is represented as being the subject 
of a conversation between Satan and Jehovah. Satan, 
in harmony with his name, as the adversary, or ac- 
cuser, prefers the charge of selfishness against Job. 
"Does Job fear God for naught?" Any one would 
serve God as well and faithfully as Job does, if God 
in turn were to do so well by him. Job is a very rich 
and happy man. It is easy to be righteous and good 
when all the temptations are in that direction. Je- 
hovah is represented as denying this charge against 
her servant Job; and in order that the greater shame 

*The uniform use by the author of the book of the name Je- 
hovah, seems to indicate that the book was written by a Hebrew, 
and at a time when that name had already come into common 
use in its distinctive sense among the covenant people; but at 
what time cannot be determined. The fact that other names 
are uniformly put into the mouths of the dramatis personse is in 
harmony with the other fact that the scene is laid outside of the 
sphere of the covenant people both as to their theology and 
their civilization. It is God in his relation to mankind general- 
ly that is presented, though this God is identified by the writer 
with Jehovah. The thought of the book is distinctively "He- 
brew" only in so far as it is the thought of the writer. How far 
this is the case we may never know, until we have learned to 
what extent the characters of the book were real persons. These 
considerations, when elaborated somewhat, seem to render pre- 
carious any guess as to the age of the book based on internal 
evidence. 



PERIOD OF THE PBOPHBTB. 

of defeat may accrue to Satan, and the greater glory 
to himself and Job, he says, "Try him, and sec; do 
anything to him, however severe, only spare his life." 

This, then, on its divine side, is the basal thought of 
the book; the possibility of disinterested service, or, 
the possibility of faithful service induced by nothing 
but love. Not often, in the revelation as contained 
in either Testament, are the gates so far ajar that we 
may see what is going on, or hear what is being said. 
in the spirit world. But this is one instance; and per- 
haps oftener than we are aware are we ourselves the 
subject of observation or of conversation there. 

(2.) But the scene of the drama is changed from 
the invisible to the visible world. Satan and Jehovah 
disappear from observation. The dramatis persona 
are Job and his friends. The scene is in Arabia, at 
the desolated home of Job— his property all gone, his 
children" all dead, even his wife, with lost integrity, 
speaking as one of the foolish women, his friends 
turned into accusers, himself afflicted from head to 
foot with a loathsome disease, and his bed an ash heap; 
Job, the one who was regarded as a perfect man and 
upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil! The 
b sal thought now is, on the human side, u Why do 
the innocent suffer? 11 

These two basal thoughts — the one on the divine 
side, the other on the human — may be united in the 
one inquiry as to the mystery of suffering. The answer 
briefly as follows: 

1st. JefwvaliH. To prove to their detainers, whether 
visible or invisible, the possibility of disinterested love 
and service, thereby great glory accrues to Jehovah 
and a great vindication and reward to the sufferers. 



334 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

This solution restricts the suffering to the innocent, 
and was not known to Job in the first place. 

2d. Jotfs. He cannot answer, but affirms and re- 
affirms his innocence, and wonders at the mystery. 

3d. JoVs Friends'. They answer substantially by 
denying that the innocent ever suffer. It is all right. 
God is just. This is also Elihu's answer. Job has 
no right to complain. u Why dost thou strive against 
him? For he giveth not account of any of his matters" 
(xxxiii, 13). "Far be it from God that he should do 
wickedness; and from the Almighty that he should 
commit iniquity. For the work of a man shall he 
render unto him, and cause every man to find accord- 
ing to his ways" (xxxiv, 10, 11). "But thou hast ful- 
filled the judgment of the wicked. Judgment and 
justice take hold on thee" (xxxvi, 17). 

The third answer corresponds with the Mosaic, and 
generally received, doctrine of retribution, in* so far as 
the latter taught that disobedience must be followed by 
punishment in this life, and in so far as it failed to em- 
phasize that disobedience in this life may be followed 
by punishment mainly in the future life. As disobedi- 
ence implied punishment, so punishment implied diso- 
bedience, and all suffering was punishment. 

The second answer represents a spirit of dissatisfac- 
tion with the current doctrine of retribution, not be- 
cause it did not contain a great truth, but because it 
did not contain the whole truth. For one elass of 
sufferings, known only to the sufferer, it furnishes no 
explanation. This remark holds true, whether the 
Book of Job be regarded as an ante-Mosaic produc- 
tion, or written long after the time of Moses, as it most 
probably was. One of the earliest religious instincts 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS 

of man, or, rather, one thai soonest manifests itself 
is to associate as cause and effect Bin and Buffering In 
this present life. Even the heathen have always 
been accustomed to say: "We have Binned; therefore 
the gods arc angry with us: therefore this evil has 
conic upon us." Or looking at the evil first: ''It 
argues thai we have Binned against the gods, and this 
in turn argues that they are angry with us." If you 
sin, you shall be punished in this life. This was not 
only the Mosaic doctrine of retribution; it had always 
been, and is yet, the instinctive doctrine of the human 
heart. "When he giveth quietness, who then can 
make trouble? and when he hideth his face, who then 
can behold him? whether it be done against a nation 
or against a man only" (xxxiv, 20). "He prescrveth 
not the life of the wicked," and those whose life or 
whose "quietness" he prescrveth not are wicked. 
"Who hath Binned, this man, or his parents, that he 
should he born blind?" The very anticipation of pun- 
ishment is punishment. This is one important sense 
in which the doctrine is always strictly true, no matter 
when the outward punishment is actually inflicted, 
though it cannot be said that the forebodings of an 
evil conscience are dwelt upon in the Hebrew Wisdom 
books. Moses, as we have seen, emphasized this doc- 
trine of outward punishment in this life, not only be- 
cause of the truth in it, which ought always to be em- 
phasized, but because a sound judgment as well as 
Divine guidance enabled him to know that it was the 
Way whereby Ik; could best accomplish the tuition of the 
Israelites — especially in their national capacity. But, 
obviously, tin; common experience and religious <'<>n 

Bciousness of the Semite, whether Israelite or not, 



336 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

would at least cause him to suspect that the common 
doctrine of retribution did not include all sufferings — 
that there are some sufferings that are not. to be re- 
garded as punishments of individual sins, and hence 
that the righteousness of God needed further vindica- 
tion. 

The first answer, revealed not only in the conversa- 
tion between Satan and Jehovah in the invisible world, 
but also in the historical conclusion of the book, classi- 
fies and explains these sufferings, so far, at least, as 
the nature of the case admits. They are not retribu- 
tive, nor are they disciplinary in the sense of being in- 
tended to make the sufferer better. They are what 
may be called illustrative sufferings, or sufferings for the 
purpose of object lesson — suffering intended not so 
much for the sufferer as for others. Or, in other words, 
still, for the purpose of making evident a truth, the 
mere statement of which in abstract terms would not 
be believed, even if it were understood. The abstract 
truth in this case is the possibility of disinterested love 
and service of Jehovah. To simply affirm the possi- 
bility of it to the accuser, whether in the visible or the in- 
visible world, and to actually illustrate the truth of it 
in the person or experience of a Job, are two very 
different things, the latter of which, of course, is far 
more convincing and therefore more humiliating to 
the party accusing, and conducive ultimately to the 
greatest good of the party accused and to the cause to 
which he belongs. 

But while this is the primary teaching of the Book 
of Job, in regard to the mystery of suffering on the 
part of the innocent, other great truths in the sphere 
of theodicy are presented, the substance of which, 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 

briefly stated, is that 'Mho apparently arbitrary dis- 
tribution of good and evil in this life is not the result 

of chance or caprice, hut that God, the Creator and 
judge of all, the infinitely wise, holy, just, and good, 
presides over and controls the affairs of earth, and his 
providential care extends to all his creatures. " It is 
man's part, often times, to trust rather than to com- 
prehend. Fearing God and keeping his command- 
ments, all will be well. 

3. The discussion of the same general theme is con- 
tinued in Eoclesiastes. Here, however, the writer gives to 
the discussion a wider range, including within its scope 
not only the mystery of prosperity and suffering, but 
all the vanities, vexations, and ceaseless monotonies of 
human life. And here, as in the Book of Job, the 
loetrinc is to be reached by means of the picture as a 
whole, the total impression, and not in any separate 
texts or precepts. The struggle, the doubt, the senti- 
ment, as presented here and there by the characters 
personated, are necessary to this total effect. What 
ma\ seem to be its very contradictions, furnish, when 
rightly viewed, the strongest arguments for the truth 
ultimately brought out. The author proceeds by a pro- 
- of exclusion, the source of his argument being repre- 
sented as his own experience. On the supposition 
that happiness is to be regarded as man's greatest 
good, he seeks it first in study, meditating and reason- 
ing deeply upon the act ions and lives of men and upon 
the natural world. He finds himself, however, to be 
only as one striving after wind. True and enduring 
happiness eludes him (i, 12-18). Again, the end to 
be aimed at is regarded as mirth and pleasure (ii, 1-11); 
and he tries banquets and splendid grounds, all tin 



338 OLD TEbTAMENT STUDIES. 

arts of luxury, all that wealth could give. This, too, 
is disappointing. The pleasure lasts only for a mo- 
ment; laughter becomes madness. Then he tries the 
pursuit of fame (ii, 12-26). But why should he rack 
his brain ^to plan and execute great works, to leave 
them to unworthy and unappreciative successors? This 
surely was not what life was for. And when he looks 
upon life around him, it is all monotony and mystery 
(iii-viii, 15). In the main, the same events seem to 
befall all alike. He finds himself dependent upon 
times, and seasons, and circumstances — a Divine plan 
which is doubtless good, but which he can neither un- 
derstand nor change. There are so many oppressed 
ones without a comforter, all perplexing and baffling; 
so many evils in social and civil life, which make life 
only a sore travail. Those who cannot enjoy riches 
are rich, and those who could are poor. Irreverence, 
even in the house of God, abounds; as do injustice and 
violence everywhere. Such is the picture which ob- 
servation furnishes, in view of which is ours to accept 
whatever lot is assigned, without fretfulness or im- 
patience, the reason here being the (so far as the writer 
is permitted to see) changeless and unknown nature of 
God's plan, which, however, the author believes to be 
wise and all the Divine work very good; whereas in 
the Book of Job and in Psalms xxxvii and lxxiii a 
time is seen in the future when things would not be 
altogether as they were then. 

The Preacher, amid all the perplexing experiences 
and observations which he describes, amid all the 
human labors, disappointments and inequalities, yet 
sees the Hand of a Divine Providence, and though its 
work be to him now past finding out, the wise man 



VKUHH) 0F THE PR0PHBT8. 



should iint cease to act bis proper part in life. Life is 
not merely a play in which there are tragedies and 
comedies, and histories and mysteries, and all the 
players irresponsible. There will be a judgment, and 
the judge will be just, though the author says not 
when, nor does he anticipate the nature of the sentence 
which will be pronounced on this class or that. Watch 
and wait, and in due time all seeming mystery will he 
clearly understood. "In short, the author regard- as 
end aim of human life on earth, a joy in the blessings 
and enjoyments of this world, consecrated by wisdom 
and the fear of God, with a renunciat ion of [the hope of] 
a perfect reconciliation of existing contrasts, difficulties 
and imperfections, and an eye steadily fixed on the 
future and universal judgment, as a final solution of 
all the mysteries of the universe." (Zockler.) Our 
present and constant disposition should be that of 
God-fear, and our duty is to faithfully perform the 
work which devolves upon us. 

4. The book of Ecclesiastes, like the book of Job, 
was not written by an Israelite simply in his capacity 
of member of the Old Testament form of the Church. 
It was written rather by a Hebrew, whether Solomon 
or another, independently of any relation which he 
may have borne to the theocracy. It was written by 
a man (though inspired), and for ma?i, considered as 
a being under the government of God, and hence as 
responsible to him. The Hebrew was a man no less 
truly than lie was an Israelite; and being the latter he 
could not forget that he was also the former. Hence 
he was obliged to be a philosopher, otherwise he 
could not have had in him the natural basis of that in- 
spiration which resulted in such productions a- the 



340 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIED 

books of Job, Ecclesiastes, and some of the Psalms. 
No man can hear unless he listens;, no man can see 
unless he looks; no man can receive answers who does 
not inquire. The Hebrew listened, and looked, and 
asked questions, and, like other men, regarded him as 
fortunate to whom it was supposed to be given to 
know the mystery of what he is*, in his environment, 
and in his destiny. 

The fact that the Hebrew belonged to the Shemitic 
race may have given a peculiar cast to his philosophy. 
The theological element was dominant, rather than the 
logical or psycological. It was theodicy, questions 
concerning his environment, rather than himself, in 
the form of drama, or epic-drama, or monologue. The 
writers of Ecclesiastes and the class to which it belongs, 
represented not themselves alone. Others thought on 
the same subjects, and were perplexed, and were com- 
forted. Such writings as these fill a very important 
place among the recorded revelations of God. If they 
were not in the Scriptures, their absence would be 
sadly felt. They are upon subjects about which all 
men think; beings, a part of whose very nature it is 
to ask, Why? longing to know " the maze and mystery 
of things." This part of the recorded revelation ap- 
peals to this corresponding part of man's nature. God 
has heard or anticipated his cry. Man has knocked 
at the door of the invisible and unknown, and a re- 
sponding Voice has been heard within. There is a 
Voice, and hence there must be a Presence; and man 
does not feel so lonely as he would have felt had he 
asked and received no answer; had he listened and 
heard nothing. It may enter into no details. It may 
be only the pre-Christian version of "What I do thou 



PKUKU) OF TllF PROPHE 341 



knowest not now, but thou shah understand here- 
after" (John viii, 7); hut that is much 

To the infant crying in the night, 
To the infant crying for the light, 

such as man is, in his relation to these great mysteries, 
even only a Voice from within is better than everlast- 
ing silence. u Thou shall understand hereafter." And 

ho who hears the Voice aright goes away from the 
door of night, and about his daily duties comforted. 

These hooks are commonly supposed to be hard, ob- 
scure, and, in some respects, of vague and doubtful 
teaching; but it IS because they are not understood 
either in themselves or in their relation to God's other 
revelations, or to the nature of man. The fact that 
they are in the Bible prevents it from being an essen- 
tially incomplete book, and is no small proof that it is 
from God. But as the Hebrew natural genius was 
OSed BS the medium of other revelations, so also was 
it used as the medium of these. The recognition of 
the human inquiry is the most that is really needed, 
and it Is the most that is given in either the Old or the 
New Testament revelation —the mere fact that there 
is a certain reality behind the veil, and not an eternal 
vaccuum, and that after awhile all mysteries will be 
clearly and satisfactorily understood. For the Bible to 
say only so much as this is manifestly wiser than 
would have been an anachronistic attempt at details. 
Beyond this no information could be given. All the 
revelation that God has made to man was intended to 
help him through this life aright, and to this end it is 
abundantly adequate. No (anion- information con- 
cerning the Divine administration of this or of the un- 
seen world was meant to be given, and if the Bible 



342 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

had contained such, it could have afforded man no 
peace, even if it had been believed. Sufficient data 
for faith is found in the reality of the Presence and in 
the Voice which he has heard; and nothing can be 
known beyond faith, until as disembodied spirits we 
come into contact with the pure spiritual realities. 
Here we must see in a mirror more or less darkly. 
And with all these facts the Old and New Testament 
revelations are in harmony. 



Chapter IV. 



THE DOCTRINAL CONTENTS OF POST-DAVTDIC PROPHECY. 

General Remark. 

The first, and in some respects the greatest, prophet 
of this period was Elijah; Samuel come to life again, 
only in a sterner and intenser type, as the changed 
character of the times demanded. Like Samuel, he 
represented in person the Divine judicial power, con- 
fronting rebellious king and people, restraining them 
with fearless and wholesome violence from the abyss 
into which they were in the act of plunging, and bring- 
ing them back yet a little while to the recognition of 
the one true God. His element was outward action; 
the reformation of the conduct of a people whose 
knowledge of truth and right was already far in ad- 
vance of their morality. It was his mission to enforce 
into Israel's life the knowledge which had been granted 
concerning the true God and the right worship of him, 



PERIOD OF Till-: PB0PHBT3. 

rather than to be the bearer of revelations which had 
not hitherto been made. He was the John the Baptist 
of his day, calling Israel to repentance. 

In KSlisha, on the other hand, "we see the man of 
God in the main dispensing blessings at a time when 
the people had repented, and thus in his kindly acts 
and bearing being in a high degree typical of the Sav- 
iour himself, in whom was revealed all the love and 
grace of God, given to all who trust him in time of 
need."* 

The other prophets, however, whose utterances have 

been preserved for us in whole books bearing their names, 
looked with conscious vision beyond the state of their 
presenl to the yet greater darkness, or to the rainbow 
of the future; though, as we have seen, each was influ- 
enced in his conceptions both by his own individuality 
and the general character of the times in which he 
lived. The central thought of each, however, was the 
same, viz., "The Kingdom of God as represented in 
[srael," one viewing it in this aspect and another in 
that, according to the temperament and character of 
the prophet, or the circumstances of the times, or the 
influence which it was desired to have upon the present. 
One saw it as experiencing judgment on account of sin, 
another as a remnant emerging from captivity, another 
as already triumphant and prosperous. One fixed bis 
vision on the members of the kingdom, another on its 
enemies triumphing for the moment, or already sub- 
dued; while another saw the Messianic King himself 
as Priest atoning for the Bins of his people, as a Pro- 
phet teaching them, or as Redeemer delivering them, 
or as Ruler reigning over them in loving sovereignty. 

* Orelli, 0. T. Prophecy. 



344 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

As we look, therefore, at these aspects of the sub- 
ject more in detail in the following sections, we shall 
observe both the wide range of the prophetical teach- 
ing of this period, and also ihe clearer disclosure which 
it presents of true religion. 

§ 1. The Idea of God in the Prophets. 

^. His being, and Mis relation to his people. 

In the prophets, the two subjects which everywhere 
meet us are the people and Jehovah their God. "The 
prophetic teaching," to use the words of Prof. A. B. 
Davidson, "is not abstract, but consists always of 
concrete statements regarding these two great subjects 
and their relations to one another. We cannot, there- 
fore, begin by asking, What is the prophet's doctrine 
of God ? We must inquire what his doctrine in regard 
to Jehovah the God of Israel is." * And this remark 
is no less applicable to the prophets in general than to 
the prophet Amos, whose book, according to the trend 
of modern opinion, is the earliest of the written proph- 
ecies. But the teaching concerning the God of Israel 
is, after all, the doctrine of the GodT of the Universe, 
for, as we shall see, the two are here absolutely inden- 
tified as the one and only God, as in the former periods 
of Israel's history. 

The distinctive, and numerically the most frequent 
name by which the Divine Being is known during this 
period is still the name Jehovah, or Yahveh. In the 
short book of Amos it occurs no fewer than fifty-two 
times, in Micah thirty-nine times, and in the still 
briefer book of Joel thirty-two times. The solemn, 

* Expositor, March, 1887. 



PKiutn) OF THE puorm 



impressive, and characteristic adjunct attached to this 
name is Sabaoth. It is not found prior to the time of 
Samuel, l>ut subsequently times without number. He 
i- "Jehovah of Hosts;" or "Jehovah the God of 
Hosts;" or "Jehovah whose name is trod of Hosts;" 
etc. The origin of this addition to the name is uncer- 
tain. Sonic authorities refer it to the fact that Jeho- 
vah was recognized as lender of the hosts or armies of 
Israel, while others derive it from the stars, which, it 
is thought, were looked upon as symbolizing the an- 
gelic or invisible armies of heaven, all of whom Jeho- 
vah could cause to do his bidding, bringing them to 
the defence of his people and the overthrow of their 
enemies. In any event, the name was doubtless used 
to impress the people with the idea of Jehovah's might, 
he being the one of all others with whom they would 
best form alliance, and in whom alone they could secure 
victory and repose. "Lift up your eyes and behold, 
Who created these things? Who bringeth forth their 
host by number, and calleth them all by their names? 
By the greatness of his might, for that In 1 is strong in 
power, not one faileth" (Isa. xl.,26). The, name, th re- 
fore, is equivalenl to the Almighty or Omnipresent 
One, and in the Septuagint is rightly rendered Panto- 
krator. It did not add anything to the people's knowl- 
edge of Jehovah, only in so far as it made more vivid 
and impressive their ancient idea of his almightiness 
by the employment of a new imagery. As the name 
was the gradual outgrowth of the circumstances of 
Israel's political and military history, SO in the prog 
ress of thai history, in the minds of both king and 
people, it lost to a great extent its solemnity and im- 
pressiveness. '"Israel doth not know; my people doth 



346 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

not consider." The name does not occur in Ezekiel, 
but comes into frequent use again after the captivity. 

But while Jehovah, in the prophets, is constantly 
presented as a national God, or God of the Hebrews, 
it is only in the sense that he stands in a peculiar, and 
not in an exclusive, relationship to them. There is 
but one Elohim, or God, and Jehovah and Elohim are 
everywhere recognized by the prophets as one Being. 
There were other gods, so-called, but Jehovah was the 
only true Elohim. He was the one who governed not 
only Israel but also the world. His hand appeared 
throughout nature in all its phases and processes in 
every part of the universe. As his angry breath withers 
up Carmel (Amos i, 2), so did he make Orion and the 
Pleiades (Amos i, 8). All men are also under this 
government, the destiny of other nations no less than 
Israel being determined by him. ' 'If I brought Israel 
up from the land of captivity, did I not also bring the 
Philistines from Kaphtor, and Aram from Kir" (Amos 
ix, 7). He is everywhere God over the nations, though 
not the God recognized by "the nations. The only 
Elohim was Jehovah, and Jehovah was this Elohim in 
his relation to Israel; so that the prophets often speak 
of him indefinitely by the one name or the other, as 
had been done by writers of the earliest periods. 

2. His attributes. The moral attributes of Jeho- 
vah, God, are also set forth with distinct and repeated 
emphasis. He is "The holy one of Israel," an expres- 
sion which occurs in Isaiah not fewer than thirty times. 
Holiness is presented as an essential element of the 
Divine nature. "Jehovah God hath sworn by his holi- 
ness," as if he could swear by nothing more inalienable 
or immutable (Amos x, 2). u And one cried unto 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 347 

another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, i> Jehovah of 
hosts" (Isa. vi, 3). The Divine holiness is presented 
oftener than any other attribute as the basis of the 
appeals which the prophets make to [srael to forsake 
their sins and return unto God. He was of purer 
- than to behold evil, and could not look on iniq- 
uity (Hab. i, 13). "Exall Jehovah our God, and wor- 
ship at his holy hill; for Jehovah our God is holy" 
(Psa. xcix, 9). It was another form of the ancient 
Mosaic teaching. They were Jehovah's, hut they 
could not continue his unless they were like him, hut 
should become to him as the heathen. The relation 
between himself and his people must be not merely 
technical or official, but one of "mind to mind, nature 
to nature," Holiness is also presented as a ground of 
confidence that if the people would return unto Jeho- 
vah they should experience his favor; for as he was 
holy, so this implied that he must be faithful to his 
ancient covenant promise. But his faithfulness is also 
expressly repeatedly declared. "Thou wilt perform 
the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which 
thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old" 
(Micah vii, 20). 

His justice, or righteousness, is also clearly depicted, 
and is not merely to be inferred from his holin< 
" The just Lord is in the midst thereof; he will not do 
iniquity; every morning doth he bring his judgment 
to light; he faileth not" (Xeph. hi, 15). "Let justice 
roll down as water-, and righteousness like an ever- 
flowing stream" (Amos v, 21). As he is, bo would he 

have his people be. "Hate the evil, and love the 
good" i Amos v, 14). 

But while holiness is the attribute of God which is 



MS OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

chiefly emphasized in the prophets, and, indeed, 
throughout the whole Old Testament, he is also pre- 
sented as one peculiarly gracious and tender in his 
relation to his people. "The Lord is good, a strong- 
hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that 
trust in him" (Nah. i, 7). He pleads with his people, 
and entreats them to return. "Return, O house of 
Israel; for while will ye die." "Let him return unto 
the Lord, and he will abundantly pardon." He grieves 
because the affections of his people are alienated from 
him. ' ' I have nourished and brought up children, and 
they have rebelled against me." "The ox," even the 
ox, "knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; 
but Israel doth not know, my people doth not con- 
sider." He even follows them into exile, and delivers 
them out of the hand of the terrible (Jer. xv, 21). 
"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she 
should not have compassion on the son of her womb ? 
Yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee. 
Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my 
hands" (Isa. xlix, 15, 16). 

Nor is his goodness restricted to Israel. He already 
led the heathen in their wanderings (Amos ix, 7), and 
the day should come when Israel should be the third with 
Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst 
of the land; w T hen Jehovah of hosts shall bless, saying, 
Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
my hands, and Israel mine inheritance (Isa. xix, 24,25.) 

§ 2. Maris Relation to God 

It is indeed Israel whom the prophets for the most 
part address, and to whom they direct their pleading 
calls to repentance and reformation of life. But sin is 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS 8*9 

not regarded by them as ;t merely national affair, a 

want of outward conformity to the will of Jehovah, a 

more or loss aggravated type of sedition and treason 
on the part of a people against their sovereign. It was 

this, it i> true, for all forms of idolatry and witch- 
craft, or false prophecy, most popular sins, still held 
their ancient place in the code, and in the recognition 
of the prophet.-, as treasonable otlenees. lint ii i- 
more than this. The heathen also, who stood in no 
covenant relation to Jehovah, were sinners against 
him. Jonah was expressly commissioned to declare* 
this fact to the people of Nineveh, and to command 
them to repent The sins of Babylon and the heathen 
nations generally, which Jehovah regarded as sins 
against himself, should be the ultimate cause of their 
destruction. This fact, though recognized, perhaps, 
in the earlier periods of revelation, is more significant 
B8 set forth in the prophets. That those who stood 
outside of the kingdom of Jehovah should be viewed 
a- sinning against Jehovah and be punished on that 
account was a fact not so easily grasped as that they 
should be punished or destroyed because they affected 
injuriously the welfare of Israel. But however in- 
tense the emphasis which the prophets place upon the 
latter fact, it is obviously true that they also place 
much upon the former. The heathen could not sin 
against Jehovah a- such, for as such they did not 
stand in any known relation to him; but they could 
sin against him as the one and only true God, for as 
Such they stood in relation to him and were amenable 
to him. 

In yet another sense, sin was something more than a 
mere violation or neglect of outward relations 1" God. 



350 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

It was native to the heart, and it was the heart that 
was desperately diseased (Jer. xvi, 9). It was the 
whole heart that was faint (Isa. i, 5). It was in the 
heart that the idols were taken (Ezk. xiv, 3). It was 
from the heart that falsehoods were uttered, it was the 
heart that was uncircumcised. And consequently, on 
the other hand, it is the heart which is constantly rep- 
resented as needing to be made right before God. It 
was the heart that should be sent, and not the gar- 
ments, in token of contrition (Joel ii, 13); it was a new 
heart that must be had before the outward life could 
be right. 

The increased stress placed upon the spirituality of 
true religion as compared with the apparent recogni- 
tion of this truth in the Mosaic period is, indeed, one 
of the chief characteristics of the teachings of the 
prophets. It is not to be supposed, however, that 
there is anywhere an antagonism in this respect be- 
tween the prophets and Moses. The prophets who 
seem to attach the least importance to the law are sim- 
ply aiming to bring out more plainly the true meaning 
of that law. That works without faith, in the sense of 
inward faithfulness, were valueless, was as true as that 
faith without works was only a dead profession, and 
not a living reality. And there were times when it 
needed to be said over and over again that "the 
observance of the ceremonial law had no value except 
as the expression of a godly disposition" or truth in 
the " inward parts." From the time of Samuel onward 
this fact was emphasized (I. Sam. xv, 22; Psa. Ii, 18 f. ; 
Amos v, 21; Hos. vi, 6; Isa. i, 11 f., and many other 
passages). On the contrary, Ezekiel, Daniel and Mai- 
achi set a high value on the observance of the Mosaic 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS :J5t 



law, bul for the same reason as the Apostle James 
insisted upon the necessity of such works as fell within 
the sphere of the Christian life. As the neglect of the 
spirit of the Mosaic law is earnestly discouraged by 
the one class of prophets, so is the reckless disregard 
of its letter discouraged by the other. The via media 
was the right way in the estimation of both, and in 
this way both would have Israel walk. The sacrifices 
of God are, in the first place, a broken spirit; "a 
broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not de- 
spise." These being offered, "Then shalt thou be 
pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with burnt 
offering and whole burnt offering; then shall they offer 
bullocks upon thine altar" (Psa li, 17. L9), 

The individual Israelite's hope, therefore, of pardon, 
or justification, before God, lay In his conscious pos 
session of this godly disposition; or, in other words, 
his faith. By this he lived (Hab. ii, 4). Having this, 
he gave -lory to Jehovah as his sole sovereign (Jer. 
xiii, 16), while on Its negative side it manifested itself 
in quiel and restful confidence (Isa, xxx. 16); the faith 
which in all instances was the basis of the pardon, im- 
plying the penitential recognition of one's self as a sin- 
ner before God and dependence upon his mercy alone 
for forgiveness Psa x.wii, 5). And this forgiveness 
of the sinner implied in him all the essentials of the 
new birth, as set forth in the New Testament, notwith- 
standing the details of the atonement of Chrisl were as 
vet concealed from him. The ground of pardon, how 
ever, on the Divine side, was with him as with as, "the 
Lambslain from the foundation of the world," which 
fad became available to the .-inner then, as it does now, 
by reason of hi- faith and that which hi- faith Implies. 



352 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

It was not until Christ came that life was brought to 
light. And hence the full and conscious condition of 
permanent sod ship toward God was in some respects 
wanting under the Old Testament dispensation. "The 
idea of Divine sonship," to quote the words of Oehler, 
as conferred upon the nation in general, and then upon 
the theocratic king, nay, as affirmed in a special sense 
of the godly, was still but an idea, to be fully realized 
only in the future. The highest communion between 
God and man established by prophecy, does not attain 
to the eminence of that filial state inaugurated by the 
New Testament; for which reason Christ declares the 
greatest of the prophets to be less than the least in his 
kingdom" (Matt, xi, 11). 

§3. TJie Messiah in the Prophets. 

The historical circumstances of Israel are the provi- 
dential basis of the utterances of the prophets concern- 
ing the Messiah. It was national degradation and 
captivity that made them think of deliverance; and 
only the darkness could suggest the morning. It was 
sin that made them realize and voice the need of any 
expiation, And yet the words of the prophets are by 
no means the mere expression of the private longing 
of their own hearts for better things. The expecta- 
tion of a golden age that should return upon the earth, 
may have been common in heathen nations; but no 
heathen prophet in his darkest or his brightest day, ever 
spoke as the Hebrew prophets spoke, and especially 
did none ever associate the golden future with the com- 
ing of a particular Person, the Messiah. The pro- 
phets, in speaking as they did, were the interpreters 
of the voice of God. 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS, 858 

After the close of the Davidic period, which, as we 
have seen, had been marked by such evident advance 
in clearness of prophetical utterance, no predictions 
concerning the Messiah occur until the reign of Uzziah. 
The new period opens with Joel and Amos. In these 
and others of the earlier prophets we do not find a 
distinct reference to the person of the Messiah. The 
elaborate descriptions which Isaiah and Micah give 
somewhat later, ''do not make the impression on our 
minds that the idea was a novel one." It would seem. 
indeed, from the promise made to David (II. Sam. vii, 
13; xxiii, 1-5), and from what is said of him in certain 
of the Davidic Psalms (xlv, lxxii, etc.), that the pre- 
vailing conception of the Messiah entertained during 
the earlier part of the prophetic period may have been 
that of a king of the house of David who would sub- 
due his enemies and then gather both them and his 
own people under his peaceful sceptre. It is impos- 
sible, however, to trace any chronological progress in 
the revelation concerning the Messiah, as presented 
in the writings of the prophets. Each prophet pre- 
sents him with greater or less degree of clearness in 
one or more aspects, and only by combining the feature 
can we obtain the portrait. 

1. His person and nature. (1) His Divinity. 
Micah, v. 2, is regarded by many interpreters as 
teaching or declaring his eternity, his "goings forth" 
from everlasting being contrasted with his ''going 
forth' 1 from Bethlehem. He is represented also in 
verse 4 of the same chapter, not simply as being sus- 
tained by the Divine strength as something objective 
to him, but as possessing Divine power as his own. 
Isaiah vii, 14, is generally regarded as referring to the 



354 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

birth of Immanuel, the personal Messiah. Chapter 
ix, 6, declares his Divine nature and identity with "the 
mighty God, the Everlasting Father. " In Jer. xxiii, 
6, he is called "Jehovah our Righteousness." In ch. 
xxx, 21, he is described, in terms not applicable to 
mere man, as being the only one who could approach 
unto Jehovah. 

(2) His humanity. He is the "rod out of the stem 
of Jesse" (Isa. xi, 1); the servant David (Ezek. xxxiv, 
24); "the man of sorrows" (Isa. liii, 3). 

2. Sis office and work. (1) King. He is fre- 
quently so presented, as we have seen, in the Psalms. 
The passages in the prophets are also very numerous, 
where he is generally David, who hitherto was the 
Israelite's ideal king. Like David, also, he was to be 
a descendant of Jesse, and born in Bethlehem, and his 
kingdom should rise from humble beginnings and pro- 
ceed to a glorious consummation (Isa. xi, 1; Micah v, 
2). The allegory in Ezek. xvii, 22, also refers to Mes- 
siah's Kingdom. His royal power was to embrace not 
Israel alone, but all nations (Isa. xi, 10). 

(2) Priest. But he was to be a king unlike any 
other, save Melchizedek, for he should also be a priest, 
as set forth in the symbolical act described in Zech. 
vi, 9-15. The double crown unites the royal and 
priestly functions. He is the guiltless sufferer who by 
his suffering and death atones for the sins of the 
people. The sufferings of the Messiah are represented 
as bringing about the recognition of the God who 
saves, even among the peoples who had not before 
known him. All the ends of the earth should remem- 
ber and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of 
the nations should worship before him (Psa. xxii, 27). 



L'FAUOD OF THE PR0PHBT8 



The earth should be full of the knowledge of the Lord, 
as the waters cover the sea, and there should he none 
to hurl or destroy in all his holy mountain (Isa xi. 
This feature of an atoning Messiah is indeed the one 
above all others which has always most recommended 
the religion of the Bible to heathen peoples. It is the 
feast of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees 
refined, which alone can satisfy the hungry and thirsty 
(Isa, xxw 6; Psa. xxii, 26). The whole Old Testa- 
ment is full of the thought that God stays judgment 
upon a guilty race on account of a just and righteous 
sufferer, though it also abundantly teaches that in the 
case of those enemies of the Messiah, whether of Is- 
rael or of the Gentiles, who do not cease to be such 
and become his willing subjects, this stay of judgment 
i- only temporary. The Messiah thus suffering for 
others i- called the "Servant of Jehovah." "The 
fundamental conception of the Servant of God in Isa. 
xli. 8; xlii. 1, 1'.'; xliv, 1, 21, it is true, is the people 
of Israel as a whole, including the prophets them 
selves. Hut when this servant "is described as the 
light of the Gentiles I Isa. xlii, 1-7). the one who shall 
lead the people back to the Holy Land (Isa. xlix. 1 ♦'». 
etc. i, it is not to be denied that this description refers 
to an ideal person, and not to the servant of God 
(Israel) as an aggregate. This must be affirmed very 
positively of Isa. lii, 13 — liii. 12." The prophecy 
here point- to one who evidently does not suffer for 
his own Bins, nor a- yet a mere matter of calamity or 
arbitrary infliction of God. It is an innocent person 
Buffering therefore not for himself, but sinlessly and un- 
selfishly, as a ransom for the -in- of other- in order that 
he may procure their justification and peace. Thi.-.-er- 



356 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

vant was none other than the son of David, the personal 
Messiah of the New Testament, who, though despised 
and rejected of men, was honored of God, and by him 
raised out of the grave into glory. 

3. Prophet, or teacher. Moses, as we have seen, 
predicted that a prophet should be raised up like unto 
himself, and who should be the mediator between 
Jehovah and the people, and divinely authorized to be 
their instructor. In the Messiah of the prophecies of 
this period does this prediction also find its highest 
fulfillment. And here again he is spoken of as the 
chosen Servant on whom Jehovah put his spirit. He 
should bring forth judgment to the Gentiles, a light to 
lighten them, as well as the glory of his people Israel. 
And in all his ministrations as teacher and guide, he 
should be gentle and tender. "He shall not cry, nor 
lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. 
A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking 
flax shall he not quench." And yet the works of his 
mouth should be to others as a sharp sword. Not- 
withstanding the humiliation and suffering to which 
he should be reduced, he should be highly exalted. 
He should have a prosperous ministry; he should be 
the great preacher of redemption; he should deliver 
the captives; he should restore Israel, and bring salva- 
tion to the ends of the earth. 

§ 4. The Future. 

The indefinite period of time which lay along the 
range of prophetic vision is designated by the expres- 
sion, "the day of Jehovah," "The day of Jehovah's 
anger," "The great and terrible day of Jehovah;" or 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 

simply "that day," or *' the last day-." Three groups 
of events arc pointed out. 

In the Hist place, it is a day of judgment upon Israel, 
a day in which the "lofty looks of man shall be hum- 
bled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, 
and Jehovah alone shall be exalted." See Isa. ii, 11. 
IT; Joel i, 15; Amos viii, 9-14; Zeph. i, 8-1 s , and 
other passages in which Jehovah's own people arc ad- 
dressed. As Israel had long been held up to the hea- 
then world as a proof of how God loves, so also must 
it bear witness of how he punished even the object of 
that love, when he impenitently persisted in his sins. 
The judgments begin with the ten tribes, "the sinful 
kingdom," which is doomed to destruction from off 
the face of the earth, because the gradually increasing 
punishments inflicted upon her had been in vain (Amos 
iv, 1-13). "And after the catastrophe of Samaria fails 
to have the effect of leading Judah to repentance, 
prophecy announces henceforth the ruin of the king- 
dom of Judah, the destruction of the temple, and the 
captivity of the people, the locality of which is first 
designated as Babylon in Micah iv, 10, [sa. xxxiv, •'» t 
Judgment being the abrogation of the covenant rela- 
tion between God and his people, it was inflicted in 
the form of expulsion from the Holy Land, the aboli- 
tion of worship by the withdrawal of the shekinah 
from the desecrated sanctuary, and the cessation of the 
theocratic government. Israel was to abide many 
days without a king, without a prince, and without a 
sacrifice, and to eat polluted bread among the heathen" 
(Oehler). 

In the next place, judgment having begun at the 
house of God, proceeds to the heathen. "For, lo, 1 



S53 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIEb. 

begin to work evil at the city which is called by my 
name, and should ye be utterly unpunished? Ye shall 
not be unpunished, for I will call for a sword upon all 
the inhabitants of the earth, saith the Lord of hosts 1 ' 
(Jer. xxv, 29. See also the remaining part of the 
chapter). In general, each prophet sees the judgment 
upon the heathen according to his own historical cir- 
cumstances, or the particular character of the events 
with which he is contemporary. The heathens who 
are to be overthrown are, from time to time, the Moab- 
ites, Edomites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Assyrians, 
Babylonians, etc., these being, from time to time, the 
leading enemies of Israel. See Joel iii, 4-19; Isa. 
xiii-xxiii; Micah v. 6; Nah. i-iii; Zeph. ii, 5-6; Jer. 
xxv, 12-38; Hab. i, 1-20; Ezek. xxv-xxxii; Zech. 
xiv, 1-21. 

The final overthrow of the enemies of Israel is rep- 
resented in Joel iii, 12 as taking place in the valley of 
Jehosaphat, or the Valley of Judgment, near Jeru- 
salem. See also Zech. xiv, 4 f. The fact that the 
nations are represented as assembled and overthrown 
in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, and the temple 
indicates, as Hengstenberg and Oehler explain it, that 
the judgment upon the kingdoms of the world is an 
outflow of the kingdom of Jehovah and his Anointed. 
The nations are punished because of their attitude of 
raging hostility to the Messiah and his people; not on 
account of their transgression against the natural or 
unwritten law, u but for the position they occupy to- 
ward the covenant people, and consequently toward 
the God of revelation." The serpent's head is to be 
crushed by reason of its hostility to him whose heel it 
had wounded. 



Tilt: PERIOD OF THE PR0VIIET8. 

The third group of events is the restoration of the 
penitent and forgiving remnant of Israel to their own 
land and ancient covenant privileges; to these Jehovah 
is obliged by his nature as the Holy and gracious One 
to be faithful and fulfill the "sure mercies" of Abra- 
ham and David. The return from Babylon, though to 
be followed by a yet more calamitous overthrow at the 
time of the ''abomination of desolation" predicted by 
Daniel, is to the prophet the suggestion of a grander 
spiritual restoration in the farther future. The prophet 
sees the time when the spirit shall be poured out in yet 
more; marvellous abundance, and the prophetic gift 
shall no more be restricted to the few; but the spirit 
shall be poured out upon all flesh, even the sons and 
the daughters shall prophecy, the old men shall dream 
dreams, the young men -hall see visions, and upon the 
servants and handmaids in those days shall the spirit 
be poured. All the nations shall be Israel, and the 
Kingdom of Jehovah shall be coextensive with the 
Kingdom of Elohim, and Messiah the Anointed Son, 
the Ancient of Days, shall be undisputed King. All 
the swords and spears, implements of conflict, shall be 
converted into implements of peaceful husbandry. The 
eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the 
deaf shall be unstopped. The lame man shall leap as 
an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. The 
wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the 
desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. The wolf 
shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young 
lion, and the fatting together, and a little child >hall 
lead them. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my 
holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowl- 
edge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The 



360 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

capital city of this peaceful and prosperous Messianic 
kingdom is called Jerusalem, Zion is the source of all 
legislation and authority, and thither shall all nations 
and peoples bring their willing offerings. This resto- 
ration to renewed vigor, not of the literal Israel, but 
of Israel as the Church, which the prophets see in the 
far future, is represented as a resurrection from the 
dead. After a season of apparent destruction it should 
live again in his sight (Hos. vi, 2). He would swallow 
up death in victory, and wipe away tears from off all 
faces (Isa. xxv, 8). Ezekiel's vision of the resurrection 
of the dry bones in the valley is a vision of the church's 
rising to newness of life. "Then said he unto me, 
Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel 
.... Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and 
cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring 
you into the land of Israel . . and shall put my spirit in 
you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your 
own land; then shall ye know that I the Lord have 
spoken it, and performed, saith the Lord'.' (Ezek. 
xxxvii, 1-15). 

In profound gaze the prophets saw that the then 
present form of the theocracy ' ' must be dissolved in 
judgment and the nation pass through the ordeal of 
death before God's true kingdom could find place." 
But they also saw that, one day, the right attitude of 
heart to Him being present, He would be to it as the 
fertilizing dew is to the herb, breathing into it new 
life, and making it ' ' fair as the lily and firm as Leba- 
non." The prophecy was fulfilled in small part in the 
return from the Chaldean exile, in yet larger part when 
Christ came, while the time when the fulfillment shall 
be filled full is yet in daily process of coming. On 



PERIOD OF THE PB0PEBT8, 861 

which point of the lone line of prophetic gaze the 
prophet fixed his vision most we cannot Bay; but the 
Spirit we think meant the New Testament spiritual 
dispensation of the Church, and the grand consumma- 
tion :it the end. As for the [sraelite of those days, he 
doubtless saw most distinctly that end of the prophetic 
line of vision which was Dearest him and was the least 
spiritual. And by so much as this he was helped on. 

§5. Individual /A mrrt ction. 

But was the resurrection and the perpetuity of the 
Church all that the prophets saw? What of the indi- 
vidual? While the tree should spring up from the 
decayed Mock and abide evermore, should the individ- 
ual twigs one by one perish forever? 

The Israelites, as we have seen, through all their 
history, believed in the doctrine of the soul's immor- 
tality; hut did they also believe in the resurrection of 
body? The question must evidently he answered in 
the affirmative; though the New Testament view of 
this subject is not emphasized in the Old, hut is rather 
quietly assumed Resurrection and immortality were 

more nearly identical in the old Israelitish thought 
But they were not wholly so. The fact of a future 
restoration of the Church from a state of death could 
scarcely have been presented under the symbolism of a 
dc;id body raised to life from the grave, had not the 
idea of such resurrection been ;i familiar one both to 
the prophetic and the common mind. It was very 
ninth as if the prophet had said. As there shall one (lay 
be a resurrection of the bodies of the individual mem- 
bers, so -hall the aggregate church one day arise from 
its state of decay and death; nor do the prophets an} 



362 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

where use language that would seem to imply that the 
former idea was a novel one; and we know that the 
belief in this doctrine by the Pharisees of a later period 
must have been an inheritance, and not the outgrowth 
of contemporary inspired teaching. 

But the prophets have not left us without express 
utterance on this subject. In Isa. xxvi, 19, the refer- 
ence is not to the resurrection of the church as a whole 
simply, but to that of the individual. It is the church 
who is addressed, and her dead ones are called "my," 
that is, God's dead ones, because the}" sleep in him. 
•'Thy dead ones shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. 
Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew 
is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth 
the dead." The energy which proceeds from God, 
causing the earth to give forth its dead, is compared in 
its quickening effect and heavenly origin to the dew. 
The dead are the seed planted, and his dew shall cause 
them to rise again. 

On the contrary, in Isa. xxv, 8, and Hos. xiii, 14, it 
is the state of the church as a whole which the proph- 
ets have in mind, — not the fact of resurrection, either 
of it or of the body, but the future good time when 
there should be no more death, and the tears should be 
wiped from all faces. But the resurrection of the in- 
dividual dead is again explicitly taught in Dan. xii. 
Many — or the many, as contrasted with those who are 
alive at the time of the end, and shall not see death — 
"the many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth 
shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to 
shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be 
wise," whether of the risen or of those who had not 
died, ' ' shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS. 363 

and tlic\ that turn many to righteousness as the stars 
forever and ever" (ver. 2, 3). The prophet sees not 

only the two fold resurrection of both the just and the 
unjust, but also the genera] judgment and the whole 
future thereafter. "Behold, I create new heavens, 
and a new earth; and the former shall not be remem- 
bered nor come unto mind" (Isa. lxv, 17). 

§6. Tlie Old Testament Doctrine of An <j< Is. 

The word usually employed in the Old Testament 
to designate these beings is malach, a word which has 
reference to their office as agents, or messengers, 
rather than to their nature. Sometimes they are spoken 
of .-imply as spirits, whether good or evil. It is not 
the province either of the Old or of the New Testa- 
ment to reveal to us the mysteries, whether of being 
or of deed of the spirit world, only in so far as glimpses 
of these mysteries immediately pertain to our welfare 
a- spiritual and immortal beings ourselves. Such 
knowledge is not for the present regarded as an end in 
itself, and hence it is revealed to us only meagerly and 
exclusively in its practical bearing-. Yet of the num- 
erous instances in which they are mentioned, there is 
no instance in which they arc spoken of as if the idea 
was a novel one to the people. They appear for the 
first time in the. Old Testament as far back as the early 
patriarchal times (Gen. xvi, 7>, and at intervals con- 
tinuously thereafter until the very close of the Old 
Testament period. Job, in eh. xxxviii, 7. even asso- 
ciates them under the name of "sons of God," with 
the time when the foundations of the earth were laid, 
and represents them as rejoicing with other " morning 
stars." 



364 OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES. 

They are represented as spirits, both good and evil, 
and possessed of power to occupy man (I. Sam. xviii, 
10; I. Chron. xxi, 1). They are not expressly said in 
the Old Testament to be created and finite beings, but 
this is everywhere implied, as well as that they are of 
the same nature, differing only in degree, as man him- 
self. They are spoken of uniformly as God's angels, 
or as Jehovah's angels, and he is so infinitely above 
them as to be represented as charging even his angels 
with folly (Job. iv, 18). 

As to their office but little is revealed of them apart 
from their relation to man. In I. Kings xxii, 19, the 
prophet sees the Lord sitting on his throne and all the 
hosts of heaven standing by him on his right hand and 
on his left; so also in Isa. vi, 1-3, and Dan. vii, 9, 10, 
when an innumerable multitude are engaged in his un- 
ceasing adoration. 

In their relation to man we know more of them. 
They are represented in numberless passages from the 
earliest to the latest books, as being the agents of 
God's Providence, both to the soul and to the body, 
to the individual and to his people as a whole. They 
work within the sphere of natural law, and are also 
particularly represented as working in the sphere of 
the supernatural. 

During, and subsequently to, the period of the cap- 
tivity, angels are revealed to Daniel and Zechariah in 
a hitherto unrecognized light, as watching, not only 
over Jerusalem, but also over heathen kingdoms to 
work out the providential designs of God. 

The Israelites had from the earliest period of their 
existence been too accustomed to the belief in the ex- 
istence of angels and of their relation to man, to justify 



PERIOD OF THE PROPHETS B65 

us in supposing for a moment thai any part of the idea 

was borrowed by the later prophets from the Persians 
or other heathen. Although the office of the angels 
is presented in a new light in the prophets of the cap- 
tivity as being the guardians of Israel and other 
nations, it was only because the changed circumstances 
of God's people rendered possible and expedient a 
new and further revelation on this Bubject That the 
angelic doctrine, however, of Daniel and Zechariah is 
an out and out importation from the Persians, can 
never be proved. 

The doctrine of Satan, or evil angels of any order, 
scarcely appear- in the prophets; though this silence 
is not to be construed as arguing a disbelief in the exist- 
ence of such spirits. As we have said in regard to the 
resurrection, so may it here be said, that the belief in 
the existence of Satan and lower demons, as it appears 
among the Jews of the New Testament time, cannot 
be regarded as of recent origin, but was rather an in- 
heritance from the times past. See Zcch. hi, 1, in 
which passage " Satan " cannot be regarded as other 
than the angelic and superhuman antithesis of the 
il Angel of the Lord," and not, as some have supposed, 
as the mere human accuser of Joshua and the Jewish 
people at the Persian court. 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Aaron Ill, 134, 242 

Abraham.... 79, 89, 93, 98, 

102, 105, 123, 204, 206 

Abraham, Seed of 106 

Accad 76 

Adam 266 

"Adam" and "Ish" . 166 

Adonay 128 

Adultery 223 

Ahab 269 

Altar, Ritual of 245 

Angels 149, 161 

Antediluvians 81 

Anthropology, Mosaic 153 

Anthropomorphites 164 

Apochryphal Writings 16 

Aryan Traditions 59 

Arphaxad 80 

Assyrians : 73 

Assyrian Inscriptions 73 

Assyrian Hierarchy 56 

Atonement 234 

Bacon, Roger 19 

Babel 76 

Babylonian Captivity 142 

Baring-Gould 159 

Balak 250 

Balaam, Prophecy of 250 

Betrothal 225 

Bible 11 

Biblical Theology 11 

Bloody Sacrifices 100 

Body, Soul, Spirit 170 

Briggs 297 

Calf-worship 264 

Calling of Israel 207 

Cainites 86 

Calneh 76 

Canaan 70, 105, 203 

Canaanitish Tribes 71, 201 

Calvin 42 

Capital Punishment 233 



TACK. 

Ceremonial Law, The 28 

Cherdorlaomer 71 

Chaldea 70, 80, 00 

Chaldean Tablets 66 

Church, Identity of 11 

Church and State 96, 195 

Children 228 

Christian Dogmatics 14 

Circumcision 102 

Civilization 227 

Civil Code 228 

Coccejus 

Cosmogony, Egyptian 121 

Constitutional Law, The Mo- 
saic 218 

Covenant, The. . .93, 96, 101, 104 

Crimianl Code 288 

Creation 52, 141 

Curse, the Chaldean Account 

of 60 

Cushites, The 74 

"Cut off" from the People. .234 

Davidic Theology, The 313 

Davidson 181 

Death 187 

Deluge, Pre-Mosaic Tradi- 
tions of 68 

Delitzsch....86, 116. 107. 17:5, 190 
Difference between the Testa- 
ments 36 

Divine Unity, The 128 

Divine Faithfulness 188 

Divine Justice 140, 246 

Divine Sovereignty .... 141, 206 

Divine Self revelation 146 

Divine Face, The 148 

Divine Purity, Idea of 2 1 1 

Divinity, Sight of 168 

Divorce ., 

Disobedience 283 

Doctrine of God. 88, 111. 128, 161 
Dogmatic Exegesis 21 






368 



INDEX, 



«. PAGE. 

Dreams 162 

Earth, Population of 72 

Ebionites 41 

Ecclesiastes 312 

Edersheiin 179 

Egyptians, Religious State of 90 

Elamites 76 

Election of Israel 207 

Elijah and Elisha 265 

El, Eloah, etc 114, 117 

Elohim. .82, 84, 85, 105, 114, 

118, 121, 127, 143, 163, 203 

Eldest Son 230 

Enoch 84, 85, 266 

Entail of Land 280 

Erasmus. 21 

Erech 76 

Esau 107,205 

Ethiopians 109 

Excommunication 234 

Exodus 12 

Fall, The 175 

Fall, Traditions of the 59 

Face, The Divine 148 

Flatt 24 

Foreigners 229 

"Form" of God 165 

Francke 223 

Future Life .89, 189 

Genesis 12, 54 

Gesenius 149 

Greek Fathers 149 

Ham 69,203 

Haupt 64 

Hebrew Learning 19 

Hebrew Language 121. 156 

Hebrew Theology 216 

Hengstenberg 24, 140 

Herodotus 77 

Hesiod 61 

Kigh Priest, Attire of 238 

High Places 264 

History, a Revelation 30 

Hittites, The 73 

Hittite Inscription 73 

Hodge.... 149 

Holiness 135 

Human Race, Unity of . . 154, 160 

"Ideal Man," The 311 

Idolatry , 262, 264 

Identity of the Testaments ... 37 



PAGE. 

Image Worship 133 

Individualism 26 

Isaac 102,106, 204 

Israel, Call of 207 

Israel, Kingdom of Priests. ..210 
Israel, Jehovah's Property. ..209 

Israel, Government of 214 

Ishmael 205 

"Ish" 166 

Jacob 102, 106, 204 

Jahn 234 

Japheth 69, 203 

Jehovah .... 82, 114, 123, 129, 

204, 208, 252, 314 

Jehovah Sabaoth 127 

Jeremiah 269, 276, 277 

Jewish Theology 177 

Job 312 

Joshua 261 

Josephus 112, 195 

Jubilee, The 230 

Judicial System, The Mosaic. 221 
Justice, Legislative and Judi- 
cial 140 

Judges, Office of 262 

Judges, Times of 261 

Kings, Order of 256 

Kingdom of God 195 

Knapp 24 

Kurtz x . ...126 

Land Laws 229 

Lamech 85, 86 

Languages, Divergencies of . . 71 

Lenormant 64 

Levirate Marriage 226 

Levites 236 

Lewis, Dr. Tayler 192 

Lord's Supper, The 39 

Lyra, Nicholas 20 

Magistrates, Number of 221 

Man, Primeval 59 

Man, Mosaic Doctrine of. ...153 

Manichseans 42 

Mantism 278 

Malakh, The 148 

Marriages, Levirate 226 

Marriage Laws 223 

McLaren 98 

Master and Slave 227 

Memorial Value of Types 
The 248 



INDEX. 



:;r,o 



PAGE. 

Melanchthon 42, 43 

Messiah, The... 195, 203, 254, 

258, 282, 293, 296, 298, 305 

Melchizedec 116 

Milnian 98 

Miracles 150 

Michaelis 234 

Monarchy, Establishment of .263 
Monotheism ... .88, 120, 265, 313 

Montanism 297 

Mohamed 283 

Moses 54, 108, 122, 151, 221 

Mosaic Judicial System 219 

Mosaic "Types" 341 

Mosaism 104, 146 

Murphy on Genesis 160 

Mughier 80 

Nabi 266, 278, 285 

Nature Worship 261 

Nations, Dispersion of 69 

Name, The Ineffable 129 

Name, The Divine 147, 314 

Nephilim, The 89 

Nimrod 75 

Noah 91 

Obadiah 269 

Obligations 211 

Oehler 50, 116, 149, 175 

Offences 233 

Offerings 243 

Oosterzee 24 

Orelli 273, 283, 297 

Pantheism 42 

Parents 223 

Passion Psalms, The 308 

Patriarchs Theology of 88 

Patriarchs Blessing of 205 

Pentateuc,h, Age of. 193 

Perowne 307 

People, Guilt of 245 

Penalties 211,246 

Pietism 22, 23 

Philistines 72 

Phcen i cians 72 

Physicians 268 

Physical Evil 145 

Polygamy 103, 227 

Polytheism 88, 129, 162 

Promise to Patriarchs 205 

Proper Names 115 

Probation 175 



TAGE. 

Prophetism 186 

Prophetic Gift 275 

Prophecy, Nature of 275 

Prophecy of Balaam 250 

Prophecy, Rise of 263, 266 

Prophecy, its Practical Char- 
acter 288 

Prophecy, its Moral Charac- 
ter 289 

Prophecy, its Evangelical. ...290 
Prophecy, its Predictive Ele- 
ment 285 

Prophecy, its Grouping 

Events 391 

Prophecy, its Time Element. 290 
Prophecy, its Dependence 

upon History 291} 

Prophecy, Realization of . . .295 
Prophecy, Apparent Contra- 
dictions 290 

Prophecy, Forms of 296 

Prophecy, Rationalistic The- 
ory of 297 

Prophecy, Montanistic The- 
ory of 297 

Prophecy, Periods of 272 

Prophet, The Promised 255 

Prophets, False 269, *76 

Prophets, Number and Influ- 
ence of 265 

Priests 238 

Priests, Order of 256 

Property 229 

Protestantism 25, 26 

Providence 143,315 

Proverbs 312 

Protevangelium 189 

Psychology, Biblical... ....168 

Race 159 

Rawlinson 77 

Rationalism 22, 24 

Redemption 12, 3S, 11)5, 204 

Redemption Money 232 

Reuchlin 21 

Reformation 20 

Regal Psalms, The BOS 

Revelation 27, 47, 146 181 

Revelation, Biblical 31, 120 

"Records of the Past" 68 

Retribution 212, 2*9 

Ritual of the Altar 34 



370 



INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Revival of Learning 19 

Roman Catholicism 25, 26 

"Sacred Books" 33 

Samuel 263, 268 

Salvation 40, 92 

Sacrifices 92, 99 

Satan, Doctrine of 180, 199 

Sayce 71 

Semitic Languages 118 

Semitic Heathen 119 

Semler 24 

Servitude in Egypt 107 

Septuagint Version 84, 117 

Sethites 85 

Self- revelation of God 146 

Sex 156 

Schools of the Prophets 263 

Schleiermacher 24 

Shamanism *. . . 279, 284 

Shemitic Genius 283 

Shem 69, 201, 203 

Shekinah 149 

Sinai 132 

Sin 183 

Slaves 227 

Song of Songs 312 

Sonship 208 

Spener 22 

Spirituality of God 133 

"Spirit of God" 151 

State-Church 195 

Star of Balaam 250 

Stanley 119, 129 

SteudeJ 24 



PAGE. 

Storr 24 

Strangers 229 

Symbols 297 

Systematic Theology. 14, 15 

Tabernacle, The 236 

Teachers 268 

Ten Commandments, The. . .219 

Tax-laws 231 

Terah 75,81 

Tithes 231 

Tertullian 165 

Testaments, The 35 

Title of Bible 11 

Theft 233 

Theocracy, The 195, 214 

Thouck _ 24 

Tongues, Confusion of 75 

Tree of Knowledge 177 

Tree of Life 181 

Trench, Archbishop 43 

Trinity, The 162 

Trichotomy 170 

Types 241,297 

Unchastity Punished 233 

Urim and Thummim. . . .278, 279 

Ur 80 

Van Til 272 

Visions . 153 

Vulgate, The 117,200 

"Wisdom," The Hebrew.. 50, 312 
Worship, The Patriarchal.;. . 89 

Wright's Hittite Empire 74 

Zendavesta 17 



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